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Prince of Players

EDWIN BOOTH

Edwin Booth as Hamlet

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to
suffer
, .

."

Prince of Players EDWIN BOOTH

BY

ELEANOR BOGLES

W W NORTON
-

& COMPANY NEW YORK

INC

W. W. NORTON

COPYRIGHT,
&:

BY 1 95 3 COMPANY,
,

INC.

FIRST EDITION

PRINTED

rKT

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For Katherine Coldwell

Contents

Author's Note xi

PART ONE
1 Mr. Booth

3*2
*

Father and Son

26

PART TWO
3 Seeing the Elephant 53

A New

Star Rises 79

PART THREE
5 The Fireside 107

6 The Palace of Night 129

PART FOUR
7

Suit of Sables

155

8 Johnny 173

PART FIVE
9 Another
Juliet

205

10 The Worldly Hope 225

PA
11 Peace and Quiet 249

RT
*

IX
A
Pat on the Back 268

12

13

Kiss from the Heart 290

rii

V1U

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

PART SEVEN
14 Gray Hair 309

15 The Vulture Hours 333

16

Scratch,

Temporary

III

358

Notes on Sources 377

Index 387

Illustrations

Edwin Booth

as

Hamlet

frontispiece

Junius Brutus Booth and Edwin, 1849 facing page 132

Edwin Booth,

1857 feeing page 132

feeing page 133 1862 feeing page 164

Edwin Booth, 1860

Mary Devlin Booth with Edwina,

Edwin Booth with Edwina, 1864

feeing page 164

Jr. in Julius Caesar,

John Wilkes, Edwin and Junius Brutus Booth,

1864 facing page 165
Playbill for the three

Booth brothers in
feeing page 165

Julius Caesar, 1864

Booth's Theater feeing page 260

Interior of Booth's Theater feeing

page 260

Stage set for Hamlet, Booth's Theater, 1869 feeing page 261

Stage set for Richelieu, Booth's Theater, 1870 facing page 261

Edwin Booth

in three of his

famous

roles: lago,

Hamlet, and

Richelieu feeing page 292

Edwin Booth,
Edwin Booth

1889 facing page 293

in his last years facing page 293

ix

Author's Note

EDWIN BOOTH made two

time
I

was

half afraid to hear

recordings in 1890, but for some them afraid that Booth's voice

and style might not measure tions I had at second hand.

It

up

to the enthusiastic descrip-

seemed my plain duty to listen, however, and so I did, Harvard Theatre Collection in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not three miles away from where Booth lies buried in
at the

Mount Auburn Cemetery.

sounded, faint

listened while Booth's voice

distinct, out of the crackling surface noise in Othello's address to the senators:

but

Most
I

potent, grave, and reverend signiors.

rant, but these were quiet tones. The diction the delivery formal and grand but stirring and exquisite, few reminders of an older method had to be got unstilted.

had expected

was

the elocutionary use of "me" for "my" of "oil" for and a definite flaw to a modern ear an occasional "all," singsong cadence, as "my boyish days." The voice itself,

used

to:

though, was the most beautiful speaking voice I had ever heard, with great poetry and feeling, yet with no straining for effect, and I suddenly understood the ecstatic, nostalgic praises
of the men and women, my own grandparents, for example, who had heard Booth in life. The second record was of Hamlet's "To be, or not to be." The surface noise was much more obstructive this time, with
fearful sputterings

and banshee

wails. I tried

playing the disc

XU

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

over and over, following the words of the speech on a printed copy until by degrees they became clear. It was a moving revelation. Booth had been for more than fifty years a dweller in that country of which he was speaking so softly and intimately:

The

No traveller returns.

undiscover'd country from whose bourn

Yet through the screeches and burrs of that ancient record penetrated a voice that was saturated with the magnetism of the living man and an emotion that seemed to breathe itself out of a whole lifetime's "acquaintance with grief." I have heard Hamlet's famous lines given by twentieth-century actors less conventionally, and, perhaps, from an intellectual point of view, more interestingly than Booth delivered them. But not from anyone else have I heard a rendering that so touched and thrilled with that overwhelming, mysterious
quality of "something more"; that extraordinarily poignant and yet robust appeal, which, I suppose, is genius, and which sweeps away reservations in the listener, making the mere originality and intellect so much cultivated by our contemporaries

seem

To judge by these fragments

was an actor whose
today. grandparents.

superficial

and

insipid.

We

of his art, Edwin Booth really would tower over the talents of greatness should all have more faith in the claims of our

PART ONE

CHAPTER

Mr. Booth
My father, in his habit as he liv'd.
Hamlet, Act
///,

scene 4

the 1840*5 a middle-aged man and a boy, the one obviously in the care of the other, could be seen occasionally weaving through the streets of York or Philadelphia one of the eastern cities, or Richmond. It was the boy who led; the lurching, grizzled man who followed. This, combined with the man's look of being somebody and the exceptional beauty of the dark-haired, anxious-eyed child, made passers-by stare. One would ask another: "Who's that?" "Don't you recognize him? It's Mr. Booth. Junius Brutus Booth. He's drunk again." "And the boy?" "That's his son Edwin."

LATE IN

New

More than twenty years earlier Junius Brutus Booth had made his home in the wooded country north of Baltimore. He was in pursuit of solitude. First he bought his land, or rather, leased it for a thousand years (which would last his time! ) having made sure that it included a spring of sweet water. Then he
,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

bought the log cabin some way off in which he was already living, and with die help of every man, horse, and ox in the vicinity rolled it across the fields to his new property and set it down far

back from the highroad in a clearing among the giant oak and beech treees on the skirts of the dense forest. He had the bare logs plastered and whitewashed, and the window frames, shutters, and door painted bright red. There he settled in 1824 with the young girl he called his wife, their two tiny children, little Junius and Rosalie, two loaded blunderbusses, and two fierce watchdogs. As more children were born (Henry, Mary Ann, Frederick, Elizabeth, Edwin, Asia, John Wilkes, and Joseph), he added more rooms; he built quarters for the Negroes, a barn, and stables, and planted an orchard and a vineyard. His place was three miles from the nearest neighbor, three miles in another direction from the town of Belair. Booth called it "the Farm/' and through Harford County he was known familiarly as "Farmer
Booth."

Often in winter the snow fell so deep that the white cabin lay muffled with only the upper windowpanes visible and the red door from which a path had been shoveled. plume of smoke, curling from the immense stone chimney, melted a spot of snow on the roof just under it. Everywhere else the of the

empire

early twilight. The country around lay perfectly hushed, and the only sound from civilization was heard once a week when the postboy's horn wound eerily from the road a quarter of a mile away, as a bag of letters was tossed over the fence.

snow was absolute. The woods cast blue shadows over an arctic wasteland across which sharp gusts of wind threw up jets of sparkling snow dust. The house lamps twinkled through the

pink blossoms. The woods began to hum like a tuning Every door was thrown open; distances grew shorter. From adjacent farms the neighbors arrived in their carryalls to pay visits, but often as not they found Booth gone. In pursuit of
out
its

This was the winter. But with the spring the nipping air gradually turned balmy, and the sun, growing stronger at each rising, coaxed the frozen land back to life. The Judas tree put
orchestra.

MR. BOOTH
solitude he
acres, crossed the lane

had stepped over the snake fence that bounded his beyond, and entered the forest. Here along the sweet, spicy-smelling aisles, dappled with beads of light and patches of shadow that swayed with the stirring branches, he

would follow paths at first clearly defined. he pressed on through bowers of wild The trail grew and tangled creepers. Still, on he went, across sunny grape
fainter as

glades gay with butterflies; past the "dismal swamp" flaming with scarlet lobelias; deeper and deeper into thickets where the

sun hardly penetrated, secret haunts of the raccoon and opossum. And as he walked his eyes took in these sights with a woodsman's keen interest; his thoughts were content and
strayed no further. But there were times when he neither saw nor heard what lay all around him, for his mind, nourished on the philosophers

and poets of every century, retreated inward to dwell on unanswerable questions: Whence do I come? Who am I? Whither

am

going? Sometimes he half guessed the answers, saw into

responded he was, tramping ahead with hands clasped hard together behind him or groping to thrust aside the interfering branches, which rocked under his grasp, he would cry aloud
just as

his heart, and knowing himself, understood the inmost hearts of with a thrill of sympathy, and others. His body

murmuring forest King Lear's mighty invocation to wind and torrent, or one of Richard Crookback's satanic challenges. While his voice explored, his ear weighed critically the
sense of each word, each fall of emphasis. Sometimes he stood still, the better to listen. He was a man at work, creative and
tentative.

into the

For Fanner Booth was called a fanner only by of his neighbors. He was better known along the courtesy whole eastern seaboard as "Mr. Booth," and Mr. Booth was an
actor.

His peaceful days at the farm and solitary forest walks were and down the brief respites from a life of strain and travel. coast he ranged, from Boston to Charleston, west to Pittsburgh Orleans. and Nashville, south to Natchez and played

Up

New

He

the tragic roles for which he was famous: Richard

III,

Lear,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
lago, Sir

Edward Mortimer in The Iron Chest, and Pescara in The Apostate. His audiences cheered the small, muscular figure

whose face and hands showed healthily sunburned under the whose powerful voice shook the scenery. Between engagements he hurried home. In the forest silence the bustle of the theater seemed like a dream; it was hard to believe he would ever return to it. At sunrise he sprang out of bed to dig in his garden, barefoot, whistling cheerfully. On summer evenings, when full moonlight swept all Maryland and
theater lamps and

topped the accompaniment of the swamp frogs, he sat beside his wife on the doorstep and watched their daughters and the girls of the neighborhood "tread the green grass." Joining hands and tripping in a circle around one of the trees, while their black, elongated shadows flickered across the moon-drenched clearbass
ing, the children sang old English ballads.

far out in the country the cry of whippoorwills

Many

of the songs

were acted out and these had a special charm for Booth. Raising his head, he would whistle two low notes, the signal for his Asia, to run over and hear him request his youngest daughter, favorite, which was "Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow." His two worlds seldom touched. One winter day, though, as he was on his way to Baltimore with some other actors, the coach broke down. The nearest shelter for the night was his
farm, so they all plodded back along the highroad, then in through the trees to the remote cabin.

Booth ushered them inside past the servants and children staring shyly, and as their complete isolation came home to these theater folk one of them exclaimed, shuddering: "Booth,

how

can you

exist in

such a wilderness?"
II

Booth was born in London in 1796, and the London he in was a rowdy, gaudy city of coffeehouses and bear gardens, cockfights and daring cardplay: the city of Castlereagh, Beau Brummel, and Fanny Burney His father was Richard Booth, a lawyer; his grandfather was John Booth, a Jewish silversmith whose forebears had been driven out of Portugal,

grew up

MR. BOOTH

Oriental strain in young Junius was a trace ig with this of Welsh blood from his mother's side, and through his father's mother he was related to John Wilkes, the parliamentary re-

former.

swarthy, dandified, was an ardent rehe had tried idealisticaUy to fly to America At twenty publican. to fight alongside the revolutionists but had been caught in back to his tyrannical homeland; since that mid-flight and haled the ideal of his youth had become the crotchet of his midtime dle age. He was no longer so ready to fight for liberty, but was

Richard Booth,

tall,

forever irascibly arguing for it. He held everything American hung a portrait of General Washington in his drawing room, and forced his guests to uncover when they
in peculiar honor,

looked at

He

it, then to make a respectful bow. had married Miss Elizabeth Game, who,

after giving

him two sons, named Junius Brutus for the Roman republican and Algernon Sydney for the English Roundhead, had died at
the birth of her third child, a daughter, Jane. Junius Brutus Booth was thirteen when a neighbor's servant him of having got her "in the family way" and was girl accused hurriedly paid off. He was seventeen and had enlisted as a midshipman on the brig Boxer when he was kept from sailing by a court summons to answer the same charge made by another servant girl, employed in the Booths' own house. Richard Booth went into court himself to be Junius' lawyer and defended him hotly, but the father and son lost their case and the father was compelled to pay up again. Richard Booth, who had given each of his sons an excellent classical education, now ensconced Junius as a clerk in his law office. The law bored Junius. He lightheartedly detached himself from it and experimentally attached himself to a troupe of "strollers." This was one of die countless bands of wandering players who tramped through the country,' eluding the sheriff, sleeping by the road, often reduced to eating the vegetables thrown at them onstage, but perking up bravely as they entered each new town to the beating of a drum from the baggage wagon. The Kembles, founders of a great stage dynasty,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

had begun

as strollers. So had Edmund Kean, now the lion of London audiences. Prosperous actors who had climbed the ladder could always detect the stroller by his seedy look and a

certain strut.

The gypsy life of the stage suited young Booth. He played farce and tragedy, a clown one night, a king the next; and all the while he learned to act by getting onstage and acting. What
do with his hands, how to pitch his voice so it would be heard were problems he must solve himself. The audience was his faithful teacher. "Speak louder!" "Don't fall " the spectators, and if a player were incorrigible: asleep! roared " "Get off the stage! followed by boos and a rain of apples. "Lord, what legs to stop a pig with at the end ot a lane!" someone bawled at Booth, who was definitely bowlegged. It was the year 1814 when he crossed the English Channel
to
in the gallery,

along with his troupe to play in the

traveler

. . . shipboard: seated astride a barrel eating a meat pie arid shouting: 'By Holy ' " Paul, I will not dine until his head be brought before me!

saw him on

Low Countries. A fellow "A handsome youth

In Amsterdam Booth watched history in the person of the Emperor Alexander, who arrived from Russia to take a hand
in the coalition against Napoleon.

The young

actor,

who

al-

ready had worn the pasteboard crowns of many monarchs, was disappointed in the Emperor's bearing. "He lacked that majesty," Booth wrote, "that look above the world, I thought
to see in a sovereign." In Brussels Booth was quartered at the house of a

Madame

Delannoy, whose sprightly daughter Adelaide was twentytwo, no longer quite young. When he left Brussels Adelaide eloped with him. Some months later the pair, still unwed, turned up at his father's house in London. On May 8, 1815, they were married, and after an interval a baby girl was born to them.
Booth's acting in the provinces had begun to be noticed.

He

was a magnetic
legs,

little

man. Although very short, with stumpy

his

he carried himself imperiously;

blue-gray eyes looked

MR. BOOTH

black by gaslight; his commanding, delicately formed nose was faintly Oriental; his ears, pierced for earrings, were curiously pointed "Fm a real satyr!*' he liked to boast. Early in 1817 he received the accolade of the provincial
invitation to star in London. He appeared at player, an Garden Theatre as King Richard III in Colley Gibber's Covent

blood-and-thunder version of Shakespeare's play, which was immensely more popular than the original. It was no more than forty years since David Garrick's last performance; there were men living who remembered Garrick. Just seven years before Garrick's birth Thomas Betterton had died, the foremost tragedian during the reign of Charles II. Sixteen years before Betterton was born Richard Burbage had died, for whom it was supposed that his fellow player Shakespeare had written Hamlet. So from Burbage to Betterton to Garrick to George Frederick Cooke, who had only departed this life in 18 1 1, the noble traditions of English stagecraft had

been handed down. Kean.

The

latest to inherit

them was

Edmund

Now Kean, the star of Drury Lane Theatre, considered the

part of Richard HI virtually his own property. Diminutive and dark as a gypsy, with a sharp, resolute face, Kean was a brutally realistic actor. His King Richard died fighting like a trapped highwayman, staving off sword thrusts with his bare

the inhumanly digwhich John Philip Kemble was still the great exemplar. Members of the Kemble school portrayed the crudest emotions with fastidious taste. Caught up in the whirlwind of passion, they were careful to keep their dress orderly. In a stage battle (the byword went) "they parried like schoolboys and dropped like gentlemen." Kean, on the other hand, and now young Booth, were bumptious, bustling little professionals who portrayed naked
nified, reposeful style of acting of

hands, and in this

Kean broke away from

emotions nakedly. "God renounce me! growled one old actor, " 'tis only necessary nowadays to be under four feet high, have bandy legs and a hoarseness, and mince my liver! but you'll be thought a great tragedian."

"

IO

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

That Booth should have chosen Richard HI for his London debut seemed to Kean a clear-cut challenge, which he accepted by craftily inviting Booth to make a guest appearance on the same stage with him at Drury Lane playing lago to Kean's Othello. Booth foolishly agreed. On their entrance together down the broad apron the rival actors, both such small men, looked like two pygmies even through the spyglasses focused on them by the London beaux. But when they began to act it

was a

battle of giants.

"He

is

terribly in earnest,"

was the

su-

percilious Kemble's grudging tribute on first seeing Kean act. Kean was terribly in earnest now. He used every trick known to the seasoned star to embarrass a green rival; and as the performance stormed on to its climax the figure of Othello seemed to grow and to tower over a diminished lago. When it was over, Booth scurried back to Covent Garden,

where there was no jealous senior to crowd him out. The reign of Kean as king of the London stage continued, but in the next three years Booth's powers wonderfully developed, and by 1820 he was heir apparent.
His and Adelaide's baby girl had died in infancy. Adelaide since borne him a son called Richard Junius. Thus happily tethered, Booth and Adelaide seemed the very model of a devoted couple, but Booth was a hard man for anyone to tether. He left his family and traveled back briefly to Amsterwhere he failed to appear for a command performance dam, before the Prince of Orange; his friend the comedian Tom

had

Flynn unearthed him in a saloon, his lap full of Dutch girls. Yet Booth had a capacity for true, deep feeling and singular faithfulness that had not been tapped. He was in London again when he met a black-haired flower girl who kept her stall in the Bow Street Market outside Covent Garden. Mary Ann Holmes was from Reading in Berkshire. She had a creamy skin and full bosom, was remarkably voluptuous looking for an English girl, and she was eighteen, ten years younger than Adelaide. She had seen Booth onstage in the part of King Lear. him offstage, she could hardly believe her liquid Meeting brown eyes and asked softly: "Are you really that poor little old man?"

MR. BOOTH

II

Booth persuaded her that he was. He was very persuasive. Since she could read, he gave her a tiny, exquisitely bound set of Byron's poems and soon induced her to take a little trip with him to Calais and Boulogne. On his return Adelaide and his father were none the wiser. But this double life had its disadvantages, the main one being that he was becoming seriously smitten. Appeasing his wife with another false story of
off with a theatrical engagement, he slipped

Mary Ann

to the

port of

Deal This second

ecstatic holiday

was not nearly long

enough, and before going home he extended it by a short sea voyage to the Island of Madeira. Booth was by now hopelessly in love, his passion worked on by the potent native wines; the blue and green landscape, romantic and fantastic as the drop scene for an opera; the
hot, whispering nights. The yielding Mary Ann was already with child by him. With hardly a glance back at the wife and son he was abandoning and the career he was cutting short, Booth made his choice. In May, 1821, he engaged passage for himself and his gentle, fruitful sweetheart on the sailing ship Two Brothers, bound out of Madeira for America.

in
Charles Gilfert, manager of the theater in Richmond, Virwhere Booth first applied for an engagement in the New ginia,

World, seriously doubted whether this boyish stranger really was the famous Booth whose reputation had preceded him across the Atlantic. He offered him a trial as Richard III. It was a triumph, and a few weeks later Booth played the same part in Petersburg. He was late for rehearsal, having missed the coach and walked twenty-five miles in the July heat from Richmond. The Petersburg company waited, and, finally, "a small man," recalls one of die actors, "that I took to be a wellcame running up the stairs, grown boy of about sixteen a roundabout and a cheap straw hat, both wearing Jacket covered with dust, and inquired for the stage manager. I do not think any man was ever more astonished than I was.
.
.

12

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
off

gan to think the manager was trying to put

us
all."

some joke upon

in the

That evening the whole company gathered

the
little

country theater, curious to see

how

wings of the star from

acquit himself. Booth, handsome and debonair, the nodding white plumes that sprang from his headdress adding a foot to his height, walked casually out onstage and recited Richard's opening soliloquy in a bored, tired voice with

London would

an English accent.
applause.

be very good," whispered one old trouper, the King Henry of the performance, "but I don't fancy it." Exhausted after his morning's walk, Booth was saving himself for the finale. Not until Act IV, by which time the audience was rattling the playbills and cougmng irritably, did he give the first inkling of his powers. Richard darkly hints to the Duke of Buckingham his plan to murder the two little princes:
I tell thee, coz, I've lately

He made his exit to an eloquent lack of The players in the wings exchanged glances. "It may

had two spiders

. . .

Crawling upon

my startled hopes

these lines, making his final "g" sing metalhe plucked at his breast as lically, though something prickled there, and instantly everyone in the theater felt spiders crawling

As Booth spoke

on his own flesh.

The actor's spell had begun to work. His greatest effect occurred in the tent scene, when, to the blue-burning of the lamp and the muffled tap of the drum outside, the wakes from
his

nightmare.

On the words
me
a horse

King

Give

Have mercy, Heaven!

Booth
started

bind up

my

wounds!

from

his

raked stage to the footlights.

But then so

couch and dashed down the sharply

Ha!
soft! 'twas

but a dream;

terrible, it shakes

my soul.

In the beams cast upward

by

the

row

of candles the whites of

MR. BOOTH

13

Booth's eyes flashed. His face had turned ashen; it poured so with sweat that the dark ringlets of his wig clung to it.

O tyrant Conscience; how dost thou afflict me?

Again the lack of applause was eloquent. This time it had a different meaning. Five hundred sinners searched their consciences; the awed silence was broken only by their prototype's breath. But after the last scene, when Richard, as gasps for in the Kean tradition, had fought tigerishly played by Booth and died writhing, a long-drawn, involuntary sigh rose out of the audience. Its members returned to themselves and burst into wave on wave of hysterical bravos. So did the actors onwho stood around Booth's prostrate figure. Booth sprang stage to his feet and bowed, smiling. He traveled north to play in New York at the Park Theater, on the Bowery, where the streets were loud by day verging with pedlars' cries: "Sweep-ho!" "Mend your pots and pans!" and by night with the scrape of fiddles, thump of feet in the of mugs from the sailors' dance halls square dance, and clink out of whose doors, invitingly open, streamed the light of
whale-oil lamps.

The theaters were noisy as Bedlam. The all-powerful pit whistled and stamped, sending up a stench of onions and whisky to the boxes where the gentlemen sat in their shirtsleeves, dangling their legs over the rails and signaling with
their fingers to the painted "fancy women" who jammed the third tier reserved for them. In the gallery babies whined until

their

mothers nursed them, and onstage the actors shouted over the crackle of peanut shells and the kwa-aw-pt of hawking

and spitting. Booth had an ovation in New York and on the Southern circuit where he played next: Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston (here Mary Ann's child was born in December, 1821), New Orleans, and Savannah. His simple republican manner
endeared him to the touchy Americans, notoriously antiEnglish. Suddenly, impulsively, in a spasm of revulsion from the theater, he determined to leave it. He was only twenty-

14
six

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
but he was
disillusioned.

He

felt

the theater, where "nothing soul was dry with the tumult, the
life in

is

he was wasting away his but what is not." His

it thirsted for quiet and glitter; for the position of keeper of the desolate reality. applied Cape Hatteras lighthouse, thinking to bury himself there. number of managers, worried at this threat to a good investhis getting the post. ment, made it their business to

He

mouths to feed now, counting the two in He was forced to go on acting. But his need of a England. refuge a practical need as well as a spiritual, for he must keep Mary Ann under cover drove him to leave his lodgings in Baltimore and move his mistress and baby son Junius to a log cabin on the lonely property of a Maryland farmer. Here a daughter was born. It was a year later, in 1824, that he leased his own acres and had the cabin rolled across to them, to a still more remote spot on the very edge of the woods. Booth himself was seldom at his farm, but his mind found rest in dwelling on it.

prevent

Booth had

five

Richard Booth came to America and managed the farm when son was on tour. The old republican was distinctly surprised at the primitive condition of the republic he had dreamed of so gloriously. He called Belair "Beggarsburg" and the isolated farm "Robinson Crusoe's Island." In the crude love nest in which Booth had deposited her, a pkce lonely and strange, peopled by the bronze and ebony faces of the Negro servants, Mary Ann bore her husband eight more children. He was her husband; she was his wife. So they
his

were known
girl

in the country around. Booth's father accepted the situation with the better grace as it became clear that this

from the London flower market, who had aroused his son's passion and who might have been anything, was actually (more than Booth deserved) a stanch and tender helpmate, as devoted to her lover as he to her. Booth could hardly bear their separations. "The Time seems long while away from you," he wrote from the road. "Let me

MR, BOOTH

15

hear from you by return and believe me ever and affectionately to be Your husband and worshipper, Junius." To the Booth children every article of rough-hewn furniture inside the cabin was a landmark, solid and dependable, in the dreamlike world of childhood. Each piece stood for a function of life. Their mother's spinning wheel clothed them. The cavernous stone fireplace was the household god before which
in wicker cradles woven during they worshiped, lying dozing the winter evenings by Joe, the black boy. And at each waking the sun and moon, painted as human faces on the upper half of the looking glass, beamed down on them; and mysterious as an inkhorn, a bunch of quills, and little objects later identified of seed swinging from hooks set around die glass lured bags their sleep-filled eyes. Bread was taken out of the round Dutch oven and fed to them smoking on pewter platters with a silver spoon worn thin with age. Their great-grandfather, a silversmith in England, had made the spoon. In the corner cupboard was some painted china, which they were not allowed to handle: this

was

art.

And

T^

Die. To T\*

hung on the walls and "The Roman Matron Showing Her Husband How parte,"
JJ

for education, three gawky engravings "Timon of Athens/' "The Death of Bona-

Booth was acting during most of the winter but in summer he was home for long periods, and to prove he was a farmer in earnest would harness Fanny the plowhorse and Peacock the piebald pony to the carryall, which was loaded with homegrown vegetables, then jog into Baltimore to sell his produce. He advertised for bones to use as fertilizer; a great stack of them bleaching in the sun by the barn door gave the farmyard a grisly look. He subscribed to a weekly farm journal and filed it away with his playbills. life could not Yet there was a side to Booth that the
simple of the mind ako attracted him. The fanner's living room was also the scholar's library. His books, small calf-bound editions, were in several languages. Here were the
satisfy.

The

life

English poets, Burton's Anatomy, Locke's Essay, Paley's The-

l6

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Plut , Dante, Tasso, Terence, the Koran, the Talmud, The Imitation of Christy and the Bible. Booth was deeply spiritual; he found truth everywhere in the pages of the Talmud, in synagogues where he talked

with the rabbis in Hebrew, in Catholic cathedrals where he sank to his knees and crossed himself. He loved animals and believed with Pythagoras that men's souls are born again in animals* bodies. In his pocket he carried a piece of human skin,

what creature it came would cry triumphantly: from, and when they guessed wrong

would

pull

it

out, ask people to say

animals are all alike." "That's a man's hide, tanned! For several years he forbade his family to eat meat or fish. No stock was killed on his farm, no opossums were hunted, no rabbits trapped. Even the poisonous copperheads went unmolested. When one of them sunning in a furrow was hurt by the Booth tossed Mary Ann's bonnet out of the only bandplow, box in the house, lined die box with wadding and bedded the snake inside until it was well enough to crawl away. "For nearly three days" Mary Ann told her neighbors plaintively, "that fearful reptile occupied my band-box and our parlor!" Master and arbiter of his little community, Booth was often its doctor, sometimes its clergyman. If a death occurred and

We

no minister was near, it was Booth who read, most beautifully, the service in the tiny family burying ground where the black
had no slaves) were buried too, outside the rails. His comings and goings were the erratic pendulum that regulated the life of the farm. Whenever he returned, travel-weary, and set eyes once again on the white-washed cabin, guarded by trees and with the body of the forest looming up behind it, his nerves relaxed, his step quickened and his heart leaped with affection for his own fireside. Away from home he sent busy instructions: "Joe must fit the Garden Paling so as to prevent up the fowls getting in, & it is time now to sow Radishes and Carservants (he
rots."

Water always

His two chief cares were for his animals: the dog Boatswain "should have a run once or twice every Day & his Tub of
supplied (a thing very likely to be forgot as of

MR. BOOTH
no importance when in fact it is). "Pay all attention to the regularity
. .

17

."

of their diet

And for his children: & motions"

To
would

his father
I

he wrote: "I'm sick of acting much rather be home. Have the stray Hogs returned?"

my

to Mary Ann: "My love for you is still undiminished. care of your Health & don't be dull or fretting there's Take own soul. God bless you dear Wife.' 7

And

IV
Booth went back twice to England, re-entering
brilliant

arena of the

London

theater with

its

briefly the satiety of talent

and 'cut-throat rivalries. In 1825, with unbelievable boldness, he spirited Mary Ann to England with him and with unbelievable adroitness kept his two wives safely apart. Mary Ann was packed off to visit her mother in Reading, while Booth rejoined Adelaide and his son Richard, now six years old, in London. He had sent them money during the past four years and Adelaide, still in blissful ignorance of his other household, welcomed him gratefully. But soon he slipped off with Mary Ann for the continent and sailed from Rotterdam for New York, leaving his legitimate wife and son alone again to shift for themselves. His stage appearances in London and the provinces had not been entirely successful, and he came back thankfully to the warmer embrace of the uncouth, friendly country that had made him one
of its brightest
stars.

a playbill could fill any theater in America. Booth was often paid a hundred dollars a night. But he was not happy; he was a man against himself. When he was young, fame was his spur. Now he had fame, and the spur was

The name MR. BOOTH on

wanting.

took to reviving himself after the play with a pint of porter or a glass of brandy. From there it was only a step to drinking beforehand to brace himself. Then he began to act
drunk, though this was nothing singular. All too frequently an actor, his stomach whirling, whisked offstage for a moment to heave-ho, then tottered back, or wholly fuddled,

He

when

l8
fell

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

plunk to the floor and was hauled off by the elbows and heels, after which the harassed manager sidled from the wing to read the delinquent's part out of the promptbook. Richard Booth drank too, neglecting his duties as overseer and sneaking off to the nearest saloon. He and Junius had it back and forth. "Sir," Booth wrote home furiously to his father during one of his own absences from the farm, "Argument with you is out of the Question, but I beg you for your own Sake, to refrain from that destructive and Sense-depriving Custom." Alas, die same craving that could transform the father from a dignified gentleman in formal clothes, with hair neatly powdered, into a disheveled figure muttering and stalking through the house, his hair in strings, his bare feet showing long, uncut this same craving had increasing dominion over the toenails

And then: "Ah, Junius, Junius," the when it was his son's turn for a debauch.
son*

old

man whimpered

But Junius Booth's drinking was only one symptom of something more serious, more alarming. He began to show signs of
derangement. His drinking brought to the surface a deepseated disturbance of mind.

His sorrows helped to unhinge him.

He was playing in Richson Frederick

mond when word arrived that

was desperately ill.

his four-year-old

He made all haste home, but the child died.

Dangerously despondent, Booth was returning to Richmond when news of the illness of his little daughter Elizabeth caught up with him. He reached home to see her die. At this second loss Booth went out of his mind completely. Mary Ann nursed him back to health. He was up and off again when a third child, another daughter named after her mother, died suddenly. Booth hurled himself back across the snowy miles that separated them, had the little girl's body disinterred and carried into the warm house where he hung over it, beseeching God for a miracle. Recently he had broken his rule and eaten "dead flesh." He was sure this had caused his afflictions. Guilt oppressed him and he did penance, filling his shoes

MR. BOOTH
with dried peas, then
all

19

the

way from

fitting leaden soles to them and trudging Baltimore to Washington.

was what Booth's children called his of madness. They learned from their courageous mother spells to treat him during these periods with tact and patience mingled with reverence. The general public was not so forebearing, and Booth was often blamed for being drunk when he was really ill. "I can't read! I'm a charity boy! I can't read! Take me to " the lunatic asylum! he shouted in the middle of a performance at the Tremont Theater in Boston. The manager hustled him offstage while he simpered and screeched with laughter. Then he gave his captors the slip, shucked off most of his clothes
"Father's calamity"

and walked in

his stocking feet

from Boston to Providence.

The

him and Walpole, shaking his head and gesticulating. Once, for no good reason except that he felt like it, he played Cassius in Julius Caesar walking on tiptoe and Pierre in Venice Preserved speaking in a whisper. Often he bolted from his dressing room before the curtain rose. He was a favorite, so
the audience usually stayed seated, venting its impatience in brays from the pit of "H'ist dat rag!" while one of the actors and perhaps a gentleman or two from the boxes hurried out to
find him.
in them.

driver of the Providence coach going the other way saw in his underwear striding along the road between Dedham

They tried the taverns first, but Booth was not always

York they During The Merchant of Venice in discovered him dressed as Shylock slaving at the pumps to put out a fire many blocks away. In Providence a hotel clerk climbed through a window into the tragedian's locked room

New

and peeped under the bed. There almost in his face were Booth's bright eyes staring at him. "He had some very odd ways at times," one old actress recollected fondly. This was Mrs. John Drew, who remembered a performance of Hamlet in Natchez. Ophelia was giving her all in the mad scene when a voice offstage began to crow like a rooster and the manager, glaring up into the flies, saw Booth, who was doing the crowing, perched on top of a
ladder.

20

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

"The manager," Mrs. Drew recalls, "ascended the ladder and had quite a lengthy discussion with Mr. Booth, who at last consented to come down on condition that he should resume his high position after the play, and remain there until Jackson was re-elected President." Booth knew Jackson, whom he had

The Hermitage, near Nashville. sometimes Booth was normally drunk. Again in Boston an audience waited for his Lear. Backstage the exKing hilarated star was being helped to his dressing room when he heard the growling and stamping of the crowd. He shook off the puny arms holding him, pushed his red, hilarious face between the curtains, and waved his clenched fist. "Shut up, shut up!" he yelled. "Keep quiet! You just keep still and in ten minutes I'll give you the God damneaest Lear
visited at

And

you ever saw in your lives."

He

kept his promise.

those who knew him well couldn't always be sure if he were drunk or raving. "I must cut somebody's throat today. Whom shall I take?" he demanded at rehearsal one morning. Next minute, whipping out a dagger, he made a rush for James

Even

Wallack, the Engfish actor,

fell

who

in his panic

stumbled and

so that the blade passed harmlessly over him. Booth arrived by sloop at Annapolis and failed to at the theater where his name was billed.

Tom Flynn,

show up
his old

friend

from England, discovered him

captain's cabin pointing a pistol at in a corner hugging a bowl of

on board ship in the the captain, who cowered

still

Epsom salts.

"Drink, sir, drink!" boomed the little actor in the giant's voice that astonished his audiences. "You're bilious and need
sir,

I know it by your skin! Drink, send you to another and a better world! " "Pray let me off. Think of my wife and children. I've drunk six bowls full already," the victim was sniveling as Flynn burst

physic.

know it by your eyes!

or

I'll

in.

'

plays

on Sunday,

but many actors primly refused to

perform. Booth was in Phila-

.MR.
delphia.

BOOTH

21

The first Sunday morning of his engagement there he jumped into his Hamlet costume, borrowed a horse, and clattered through the streets alongside the church-bound Philadelphians.

"Ladies and gentlemen/' he called into the Sunday hush, "I intend to perform Hamlet tonight and a good play is worth forty sermons." Then he broke into a Lincolnshire drinking song called "The Poachers":

Oh,

Of

'tis delight a shiny night. .

my

hadn't troubled to saddle or bridle his horse. Without warning it bolted and Booth, who had twisted halfway around,

He

lurched forward onto its rump. He clutched the streaming tail with both hands, locked his legs around the animal's neck, and

was borne as though on the wind's back out of sight of the amazed citizens. This ended his Philadelphia engagement. His friends returned him to the farm in Maryland, where his family closed its ranks around him and the country life soon soothed
his

mind.

In 1836 Booth visited England again, taking Mary Ann and the children. Adelaide and young Richard were in Brussels visiting her family. Somehow Adelaide still believed him, as

he assured her by letter through the years that he would return one day to be with her permanently.
In London little Henry Henry Byron Booth, named for Lord Byron died of smallpox. He was eleven. Edwin, who was three, and the baby Ask came down with the plague but

only
all

lightly,

having been vaccinated, and soon were well.

Of
the

the children

Henry was the

dearest to his father.

On

stone raised over his son's grave in the yard of the Pentonville Booth had carved the beautiful lines by Southey: chapel

Oh, even in spite of death, yet still my choice, Oft with the inward, all-beholding eye I think I see thee, and I hear thy voice.

22

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
The

old sense of guilt overhung him as he herded his family back to America. He had other cares. His sister Jane had married a fellow named Jimmy Mitchell, who had been a kitchen boy in her father's London house. While Booth was in London Mitchell blackmailed him Booth was open to blackmail, as his brother-in-law well knew. Home again in Maryland, Booth sent his sister the wherewithal to leave her husband and join him at the farm with her eight children. But all ten Mitchells including Jimmy came, and the unsavory tribe of Mitchell children, one of whom was "not right," scuffled and snapped like scabby puppies over Booth's chosen refuge. Their father
bullied their mother, wouldn't work, was constantly in liquor, and courtly old Richard Booth found his own solace in an-

other bottle and declined to address a word to any of them. Booth's health was usually better at the farm, where he seldom drank. Even here the cloud sometimes settled over him.
died. Booth wrapped the body in a bed and invited his neighbors to the funeral. His feeling for animals had become a mama. He loved each dog, each horse, belonging to him with a personal love, and in their devoted eyes he saw every virtue that man has not. He was playing in Louisville when he wrote to a Unitarian clergyman there, the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, requesting a burial place

His pony Peacock

sheet

for his "friends." Clarke, misreading the word as "friend," for he had never been required to bury more than one friend at a time, called on the actor at his hotel. "Was the death sudden?" he asked sympathetically.

"Very,"

said Booth.

"Was he a relative?"
"Distant," answered Booth laconically, then offered wine and cigars, which were refused. "Well," Booth said, "let me try to entertain you in another

way. Perhaps you'd like to hear me read?" He opened a book and the incantatory stanzas of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner began to beat forth. They held Clarke
hypnotized. "I have listened," he writes, "to Edmund Kean, to Rachel, to Jenny Lind, to Fanny Kemble, to Daniel Webster,

MR. BOOTH
them

23

to Dr. Channing, to Emerson, to Victor Hugo; but none of affected me as I was affected by this reading. Booth acthe mariner. / 'was the wedding-guest, tually thought himself
listening to his story."

At
eye. I

last

in the

little

the reading ended and "again I found myself sitting hotel parlor, by the side of a man with glittering
like to look at the

drew a long breath." Booth asked: "Would you

remains?" and

snatching up a candle led his guest into the bedroom. Laid out on a sheet were about a bushel of dead pigeons, which had been shot flying over Louisville and offered for sale on the street
corner. Booth knelt and gathered

up an armful of the

little,

cheeks as he railed at the massacre. Clarke was really touched, but he flatly rejected Booth's request for a coffin, hearse, Christian service, and plot in the churchyard for his pigeons. "Why not help me?" Booth pleaded. "Do you fear the laugh

limp bodies. Tears streamed

down his

of man?"

"No,"
do."

said Clarke sincerely, "but I don't look at

it

as

you

Booth bought a plot in a cemetery outside the

his friends there.

city

and buried

the theater during the next few days he acted his parts with such savage abandon that the other players were terrified of him. Soon his fit reached its climax. He dis-

At

appeared from

his hotel

and was found wandering through the

Louisville.

snow in some woods beyond

Booth's family never did learn just what happened in Charleston on the famous occasion when Booth broke his nose. He and Tom Flynn were bound for Charleston with a theatrical troupe when their ship reached the spot off the city harbor where a

discouraged actor
self.

Booth

cried:

overboard.

named William Conway had drowned him" "I'm just going to see Conway! and jumped couple or sailors helped Flynn lower a boat and

Booth was hoisted into it. But this was only a preliminary. According to one story, as Booth and Flynn sat drinking in Truesdale's saloon after their

24

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Charleston opening, Booth suddenly imagined he was Othello and Flynn was lago, and shrieking
"Villain,

be sure thou prove

my

love a whore,"

he flew

at Flynn and hurled him under the table. Flynn seized a poker and landed a blow that broke Booth's nose. Another version had it that Booth crawled through a win-

in the Planters' Hotel where Flynn lay an iron firedog up from the fireplace and sleeping, swung brought it down over Flynn's right eye. Flynn leaped out of bed, and the two men grappled and crashed to the floor. Flynn, twice the larger, finally pinned Booth down, but in the strug-

dow

into the

room

was ravaged, clawed and sorrow. His once clear eyes were bloodshot, by dissipation they had pouches under them. He came back to his family from
face

was broken. Even before this accident Booth's He was in the prime of life but his
gle Booth's nose

disorder had

changed him.

Charleston with his remaining good feature, his aquiline nose, bashed in and ruined. The damage to his nose had injured his voice and his head tones emerged weak and disagreeably nasal.

"The last time we saw Mr. Booth in Hamlet" declared a member of his audience, "we could not but dwell on the appositeness of Ophelia's remark:
O! what a noble mind
is

here o'erthrown."

Yet even now in

reputable,

his inspired

moments

battered and dis-

known over the land as "crazy Booth, the mad trage-

he could enter a lagging scene and instantly animate still like a handsome man. His person bristled with charm and intellect. He continued to act. After the first shock his audiences forgot the broken nose and in time
dian"
it.

He

carried himself

his voice

grew strong

again.

So Booth went on his way from theater to theater. The brown-bearded Walt Whitman saw him as Richard. The first thing one saw was his lifted foot passing the wing, then the quiet entrance from the side, "as with head bent," writes Whit-

MR. BOOTH
that peculiar

25

man, "he slowly walks down the stage to the footlights with and abstracted gesture, musingly kicking his sword which he holds off from him by its sash. Though fifty have passed since then, I can hear the clank and feel the years hush of perhaps three thousand people waitperfect following
ing-"

Booth went on his way, dazzling the public and driving manfrom barkeepers who agers distracted, borrowing playscripts them under the counter lor him, spouting Shakespeare kept from table tops, bawling out "The Poachers" ("Oh, 'tis my ."), and smashing tavern furniture. "Praise be to delight Allah!" he began a letter to a friend. The letter was headed:
. .

"Exterior of Louisville Jail."

"Your loving communication

has been just delivered after

my

third incarceration in the above for carrying

business:

on

solely an

unprofitable and disgraceful

namely

telling the

Truth Booth had been jailed for disorderly conduct. His letter conto Scoundrels."

you intend making money by sale of Hog's blood in which is the life. It is none of my business only The Hindoo religion is the be sure blood calls for blood. . one I believe to be at all like Truth were this my last only moment ,& Death hanging over me I would declare myself Hindoo versus quasidum. Had there been no fish there would have been no Cnicifixion do you take? Excuse bad pen, hurry dirty hands torn papers and Steamboat about to go."
tinues: "I hear
.
.

Between these adventures there were halcyon days

farm, where
balance.

at the

communion with nature

But

Then back on

usually restored Booth's the road he went, to the turbulent life

as his drinking

that most undid him.

became more de-

termined and his outbreaks more dangerous, he could no longer be trusted to go alone. In his last years a companion traveled with him whose duty it was to divert and tranquilize his excited mind and to coax the glass from his hand when possible. His son Edwin was the companion.

CHAPTER

Father and Son

Come
.
.

my boy. Ho w dost, my boy? have one fart in my heart Thafs sorry yet for thee. King Lear, Act III, scene 2
on,
r

THE night of November 13, 1833, a shower of meteors, fiery spearheads trailing clouds of brightness, shot across the sky over the Booth farm. Beson had low in the cabin candles were burning. In the servants' quarjust been born. He was born with a caul. ters the wise old Negroes cackled delightedly while the huge shadows of their turbaned heads and corncob pipes wagged in chorus on the walls behind them. Consulting the weird lore of their African ancestors, they peered into the child's future and predicted that because of the star-shower and the caul he would be lucky and "gifted to see sperrits." Booth named this son Edwin for the American tragedian Edwin Forrest and Thomas for Flynn. Edwin Thomas was the seventh child, another good omen. After him was born a daughter, named Asia by her father in remembrance of that pleasant continent where God walked with man after the creation; and next came John Wilkes, who bore the proudest name in the family. Tenth and last was Joseph Adrian.

ON

Tom

26

FATHER AND SON

The
little

2J

Booths were lovely to look at. Edwin, Asia, and alike, having their mother's dark hair and with irises of such an intense brown as to seem her glorious eyes black, the whites very white, the lids fringed with long, upcurling lashes. From their father they had all three inherited a nervous instability, a feeling for beauty, and, underlying everything else, a capacity for melancholy never to be out-

John looked much

grown.
a quiet boy. Sturdy Junius had his father's asserand Johnny was a born charmer. But visitors to the house who met Edwin often overlooked his own charm, which was not assertive. He was as full of fun and charged with entiveness,

Edwin was

thusiasms as his boisterous brothers, but much less eager than they were to challenge. His motions were very quick and a small cat's. In moments of excitement his velgraceful, like

vety eyes grew enormous, but only an occasional expression

when the black eyebrows arched, the lashes swept upward, and
the deep pupils flashed gave promise of his father's fire. Asia was passionate and sensitive. She shut herself in her room to weep and write poems. The give and take of life in a large family came hard to her, and she passed whole days glowering with resentment over imagined slights. "Missy's long
sulks," the servants called these moods.

Johnny stormed through the woods on horseback, screaming his throat dry at invisible enemies and whirling a Mexican

War

saber over his head.

He

Lord Randall and Barbara

loved the grim old ballads like Allen, and could detect the sadness

in the music of the Negroes' jew's-harps twanging tunelessly out of the dim kitchen on a summer evening. had the

He

Booth love of animals. Once his darling horse Cola di Rienzi bit him and he cried. Once he caught a katydid and kissed it

germ of heroic deeds. A hundred times she had one night when he was six months old, as she sat nursing him beside the warm chimney place, she had prayed to know his future. And as if in answer, the dying flames blazed
escapades the
told

before letting it go. Johnny took the place in his father's heart of little dead Henry, and his adoring mother saw in his

how

28

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

up, taking the shape of an arm, then distinctly forming the word "country," and finally in fiery letters her son's name: JOHN WILKES BOOTH. The vision suggested glory.
of Edwin's earliest glints of memory was of riding out and reaching the farm very late. The midnight forest swarmed with horrors. As they pulled up at the edge of the farm Booth swung Teddy, trembling, down from the horse

One

with

his father

and over the snake fence and set him firmly on the ground. " "Your foot is on your native heath! he cried masterfuUy, and his voice banished the unseen evil things and cast a charmed,
safe circle around themselves. In the

now

friendly darkness

they

who

waited, listening to the clopping of hoofs until the

man

had come with them to take back the hired horses had galloped out of hearing. HeOld Richard Booth died and was buried in Baltimore.

brew

heavy but handsome youngster, with left his father's strong profile before the nose was broken home to go on the stage and soon married into the profession* His bride was an actress eleven years older than he, named
Clementine

inscription called "June" a rather

was cut

into his gravestone.

Young

Jlinius,

De

Bar.

At home

Rosalie, the eldest daughterr

who was
dairy.

painfully shy and had the reputation locally of besomewhat odd, helped her mother in the kitchen and ing

grew taller. Joseph, the baby, began good looks of the three ahead of Mm;, and, along with them all, a cherry shoot their father had planted by his cabin door sprang up untu from the crotch five branches separated like fingers. On summer afternoons the tree babbled
to

The younger
grow

children

into the dark

aloud with many young voices as the Booths and their Mitchell cousins crouched in the branches and ranted Shakespeare. Away in the forest they searched for elf-shot, the tiny flint arrowheads, and on the smooth grass they traced the fairy rings trodden by invisible dancers. Ask strummed her guitar beside the brook while little brown frogs slipped out of the water to listen to her. great green bullfrog that lived in the

FATHERANDSON

29

well popped to the surface and bellowed as loud as a bull; the neighbors could hear him a mile away and the children, knowing he was very old, wondered for how long his terrifying roar had sounded in the forest before any Booth set foot there. In the evenings the Negroes told ghost stories, their eyes rolling with the relish of horror. Far out in the darkness the wind wailed and the long howl of a dog made the children's flesh
crawl.

Mr. Booth was forever urging his sons to work with their hands. He had wanted Junius to study surgery and June had done so for a few months, then defaulted to become an actor.
his father seriously advised to be a cabinetmaker. By time they were living in Baltimore on Exeter Street, staying at the farm only in summer. The Mitchells had been got rid of, though they were in Baltimore, too. The boy who "wasn't right" pedaled papers. One of the girls sold refreshments in a theater. Their father lived by himself in an attic and occasionally climbed out through a trap door down a ladder and slouched along the streets, sneering at the young Booths when he ran across them that they were "too fine for him,
this

Edwin

begad." All the Booth children had fair educations except Edwin, who was still of school age when the great change occurred in his life. He had gone first to a class in Baltimore taught by Susan Hyde, a maiden lady. There he learned the three R's, and from there his father sent him to be tutored by a retired French naval officer, Monsieur Louis Dugas, who more than

anything improved Edwin's fencing. June, an expert, had already taught him the rudiments of swordsmanship. Still later he went at erratic intervals to a Baltimore school whose princia Mr. Kearny, emphasized elocution and dramatic readings pal, this was accident, and not design on his father's part; Booth did not wish his sons to be actors. From an Italian, Signor Picioli, Edwin learned a little of the violin, and a friendly Negro
taught him to sing plantation songs and thrum the banjo like a professional, making it give out a bell-like bass resonance.

30

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

But this was all. He was thirteen when he was sent on the road to watch over his father. When they were young, Booth and Mary Ann had often traveled together and even acted together for a few performances, though Mary Ann was no real actress. Sometimes they had taken Teddy with them to be put to bed in a chest of drawers in the dressing room, and when Booth rushed in between scenes, he would toss the rudely awakened infant into
" the air with a, "Why, that's my dainty Ariel! Later Mary Ann dropped out, and for a time Booth traveled
alone. His drinking him to be his

grew worse and June was dispatched with

Then June, having acquired a taste for chaperon. the theater, married into it and struck out on his own. Booth's next companion was none other than his legitimate son Richard,
from London, where he had been scraping a paltry living teaching Latin and Greek. Booth forwarded him the funds to sail to America, then took him on the road. But this was tempting fate too far. When Richard discovered that another woman passed as Booth's wife and that Booth had six children who carried his name with no legal right to it, he left his father's service. In 1847 it was Edwin, one of the base-born sons, who became Booth's last and most faithful guardian.
called over

wasn't acting, Edwin went back to Sometimes Booth would start out by " himself, but sooner or later the word came: "I need Ted! When his son appeared, "Did you bring your books?" was Booth's greeting, for they kept up the fiction that while Booth was behind the footlights Edwin sat studying in the dressing room. Then father and son would sally forth together on the theater circuit by coach and rail and river steamer. grinding Booth's engagement over, Edwin dropped from his high place as a man men and became a schoolboy again until the among next summons. His schoolmates envied him wildly, never realhow gladly he would have stayed among them. vagaizing bond life soon lost its charm. At home and in his right mind, Booth largely ignored Edhis father

At first when

Mr. Kearny's

classes.

FATHER AND SON

31

But away from home he needed a quiet presence. It steadied him to re-enter his dressing room after a performance and find Edwin there, wan, heavy-eyed, rather taciturn, but instantly and silently solicitous of his father's comfort. And Edwin alone of the children was able to persuade Booth when he was in drink or madness. Just as once it had been the father's powerful voice that dispelled the horrors of the night from a little son's imagination, so now it was this son's voice, a quiet voice, that could recall the father when Booth was wound about in melancholy or lost in frenzy. Soon Edwin did not go back to school. His manhood had been thrust upon him.
hours.

win. His other children, Johnny especially, being more vivacious, amused him more and were the children of his happy

n
Edwin went with his father behind the scenes, across the and bare by daylight, through wings cluttered with the raw material of the night's illusion, into the snug greenroom where the players gathered to peruse the call board, restage, vast

volve before the long mirror, and discourse oracularly. Their simplest speeches were pontifical with quotations, racy with
anecdotes.

only to the supreme subject of themselves ("How they loved me, m'boy!") was the comparison of different readings of the famous roles. Respective merits of "a Macready," "a Wallack," or "a Forrest" were hotly disin interest
as actors

Second

puted.

While the rest watched critically, some English-born veteran would stiffly rise and demonstrate one of the great points
tremendous, special effects of the stars he had supported: fall into the attitude of George Frederick Cooke when, as Sir Giles Overreach, Cooke had menaced with his eloquent forefinger
(the finger

Edmund Kean
Old Debts.

as a talisman)

filched from his skeleton to keep and launched the curse at the climax of A New

Way To Pay

He might reproduce Kean's poignant

Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone,

32
in

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

which the throbs and hesitations were as coolly calculated and diminuendo of a musical score. He might screech ear-piercingly like Macready as Werner, roar like Forrest, when as Lucius Brutus he turned on Tarquin, or let
as the crescendo

Richard's drop Booth's bland utterance of

Off with

his head! so

much for Buckingham!

manner gave the younger listeners, of the tradition to which they were including Edwin, a sense heirs and the richness of the art in which they were appren-

And

his solemn, fanatical

tices.

and lordly bearing these profession they loved poor players were lonely people. was still considered violently disreputable. Tradesfolk never

Yet for

all

their

proud

tradition

The

they In Booth's young days a strolling player in England could be as a vagrant if caught on die road without an actor's lijailed cense. David Garrick, born a gentleman, sustained the illusion that he had not lost caste by cultivating men of rank who received him as an equal almost. "He loves to loll with lords,'*
his enemies sneered.

trusted them. Gentlefolk despised them, referred to them as while they wined, dined, and made love to "persons" even often did. The law imposed scornful penalties. them, as

But Edmund Kean, born

a vagabond,

had no

illusions. In-

vited to play at a private house before the Duke of Wellington, he refused rudely: "I'm not invited as a guest but as a wild beast to be stared at."

Even in democratic America the line was drawn. One day Edwin and his father were walking to rehearsal from their hotel Edwin noticed that nearly every man they passed greeted Booth and was greeted by him.
as

who was that?" he asked the first time. "Don't know," said Booth. Another gentleman nodded discreetly. "Who was
"Father,

that,

Fa-

ther?"

"Don't know."

FATHER AND SON

said

33

The greetings persisted and so did Edwin until, "My child," Booth wearily, "I don't know these people. But everybody

knows

Tom Fool."

learned to expect

Everywhere Booth was announced the company soon Edwin with him. Mr. Booth, short and
green-

thickset, his gray hair cropped, and wearing his usual pepperand-salt suit unfashionably cut, would bustle into the

room

to

pump hands vigorously with

sir,

the

new members, "Deslap the

lighted,

to

form your acquaintance"; and

I see

backs

of the old ones, "I hope

behind glided his young keeper, who wore his black hair long and was wrapped in a Spanish cape. There would be more introductions.

you well, my boy." A few paces

The older actresses' hearts warmed to the boy; their faded cheeks dimpled as they held his hand. Twenty-year-old Joseph Jefferson never forgot his first sight of Edwin at sixteen. Edwin looked tired and uncared for; his face was strained and
anxious. But Jefferson, with a painter's eye (acting was his trade and painting his enthusiasm), recognized the swan in the unkempt fledgling whom he thought the handsomest lad he had ever come across, "with his dark hair and deep eyes he was like one of Murillo's Italian peasant boys."

Edwin walked with

ate

his father to

and from the

theater.

He

long tables of theatrical boardinghouses. He slept beside him on mattresses often infested with creatures that Booth refused to drown (were not their little lives dear to them?) and on springs that jangled as Booth rolled over in his sleep. And if Booth couldn't sleep, neither should his son. While Booth prowled the room, Edwin dragged out his and perched on the edge of the crumpled bed, chanting banjo
soft melodies.

with him

at the

Sometimes Booth favored something lively. At the theater one day Edwin was picking out "Old Zip Coon" between the acts when the door banged open and Edwin Forrest, most celebrated tragedian of the American stage, all dressed up and a tall gray hat, strode into the dressing room. Edwin wearing

34

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
of sight but Forrest cried to his hustling the banjo out I like music! Give us some more." "My boy,
Forrest kept time with his cane, then

was

namesake:

started rocking

and swaying. And then Mr. Booth, dressed for Richard ///, jumped up and began to sway and twitch. Edwin warmed to his work. The music got hotter. Forrest and Booth put in every step they could think of: jig, double shuffle, turn and twist, round and round the center, and all the fancy heel-and-toe touches they remembered. Fiinto chairs. "Well," gasped Forrest, nally they sank panting it? It don't remind me of Shakespeare but "this is fun, ain't it does of the Bible. 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do " it with thy might! Edwin protected his father from intrusions. In Boston at the Albion, a dingy public house over an apothecary's on the north corner of Beacon and Treniont streets, he was resting in their room when his father dashed in, whispered hoarsely, "Gould! Coming up! Say I'm out!" and dived under the bed. Thomas Gould was a Boston sculptor. He worshiped Booth, of whom he had done a fine bust, but Booth thought him tiresome. Now Gould seemed astonished not to find his idol, whom he had seen sprinting upstairs. He and Edwin talked lamely until there fell a pause, which Booth misinterpreted. "Is that damned bore gone yet?" he sang out from under

As Edwin began again,

on his

heels

'

the bed.
star Booth was a specialist in a few favorite roles which the players in the stock companies along his route were trained to support him. All he asked for was to be fed his cues and given center stage. Let him do the acting! When a greenhorn once apologized for blundering into a scene from the wrong wing "Young man," Booth barked at him, "it " makes no difference to me. Only come on! I'll find you! All through the morning and afternoon he lived the character he was to play that night. Somebody once offered him a pork sandwich on a Shylock day. He snatched the meat out and threw it on the floor: "Infidel dog!"

Like every

in

FATHER AND SON

35

When evening approached, and if he were sober (it was Edwin's business to keep him so), he would bounce into the dressing room a bare quarter hour before the curtain rose, paint his face, press powder onto it, brush off the surplus, lift and fit on his wig with rapt concentration, then stretch out his feet to Edwin to be shod. By the time the gaslights in front had been lowered and the orchestra swinging into "Hail, Columbia" or "Yankee Doodle" had wound up the audience to a thrilled expectancy, Booth would be frowning beside the door while Edwin nervously silent, for his father brooked no chatter at this moment, or speaking, if he had to speak, in a colorstill hovered around, less voice clasping Booth's belt, holding his cloak and adjusting his headdress, sometimes mountopen ing a chair to do it. If Booth were playing Richard, Edwin took care that his padded hump was firmly fastened. Once it had fallen off in mid-scene, and Booth, glancing down and seeing it lying there, had kicked it viciously into the wing. Between them they made -sure he had somewhere on him one of his good-luck charms: Moorish coins for Othello, an antique dagger for Richard, an old purse for Sir Giles Overreach, a breast ornament worn by rabbis for Shylock. The callboy would knock. "Overture, Mr. Booth." And Booth would sail out of the dressing room and stump up the
stairs into

the wing.

But just before his entrance he seemed to relax and joked and gossiped with the other actors who stood all around, some of them even at this eleventh hour memorizing their lines this was called "winging" a part. One night Joseph Jefferson was waiting with him between scenes of The Iron Chest, in which Jefferson played Samson Rawbold to Booth's Sir Edward, when Booth began dreamily to recall how Jefferson's grandfather had acted Samson many back.

"He
thus:

years used," said Booth, "to sing the original song. It ran

She kept an

traveler stopped at a widow's gate. inn, and he wanted to bait,"

36
in a

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

and screwing up his face comically Booth sang the first verse low tone, while keeping his ear cocked for his cue. Suddenly the cue was spoken and he rushed onstage to discover the actor who played Wilford opening the mysterious iron chest. In that instant the whole man changed. Sir Edward had been betrayed and ruined, and so had Booth. The veins of his corded neck swelled, his tremendous voice hit the audience like a hammer stroke. Then the scene was over and he rejoined Jefferson.

"He paid like a prince, gave the widow Then flopped on his horse at the door
1

a smack, like a sack,"

Booth, a little louder this time so as to be heard over the of applause. Sometimes Edwin waited in the wing, ready with half a glass of brandy and water. If a scene were particularly strenuous his father would escape from it for one split second to drain down the toddy, which Edwin literally threw into his mouth. When Booth played Sir Giles, the margin of time between cues was especially slim, and Edwin always trembled. Midway in Sir Giles' fit of madness Booth would charge into the wing, take one gulp his head bent back then with his long hair and short cloak flying almost straight out behind him would gallop onstage again screaming as he ran: "Are you pale? Are you
pale?"

The ovation that welcomed the entrance of the would thunder down to him. Abandoning his book, he would crouch by the door, his ear to the keyhole, shivering with anticipation of the clarion lines that every few minutes topped the others: King Lear's
the corridors.
star

More often Edwin stayed below. But as he sat with head in hands and elbows straddling his open schoolbook, he could hear the voices from onstage ring through the floors and along

O Regan!
or King Richard's

Goneril!

horse! a horse!

FATHER AND SON

37

Edwin drank them all in. This was the theater. This crownand excuse for an actor's being. ing moment was the motive Even the short pauses were electric with excitement.
Turn, hell-hound, turn!
roar, and the house would fall silent expecwhile the pursued and pursuer ran to opposite wings tantly and each snatched the hilt of a sword held out by a stagehand. Up and down, backward and forward, the fighters pressed

Macduff would

each other. Sparks rolled from their blades.

feet, the singing clash of steel

The hard-pounding

the building quiver. Macbeth staggered up after every tumble and launched himself, his life, snarling, straight at Macduff, who was in real danger of believed delightedly. thepit

made

This was what the pit had waited for. The kid-glove element of the audience found Booth's performances too violent, but not the pit, whose applause was bare-handed and iron-throated. Men leaped onto the benches beside themselves with elation and cheered on the fight with wild, joyous whoops: "Hi-hi! Hi-hi! Hi-hi!" For the last time that evening the door would be thrown

wide and Booth would surge into the dressing room, rip off his helmet and wig, pull a worsted nightcap over his heated head and drop heavily into a chair, breathing as though to burst
his chest open.

"I acted 'well tonight!

"

Edwin would night's work was

door, Booth
his right

spring up, instantly apprehensive. His own was his father's dangerjust beginning. ous hour, and if Edwin with a sinking heart tried to separate him from the raffish hangers-on who lurked outside the stage

Now

would begin to saw

the air beside his head with

"Go

and to threaten Edwin: man, go away! Or by God, sir, I'll put you away, young

hand

in a dismissing gesture

aboard a man-o'-war, sir!" And yet it was his wish that Edwin be present. It was to his son's vigilance that the father committed himself. Having done

38
so,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

he tried to escape this vigilance with all a drunkard's and a madman's cunning. Locked into his hotel room from the outside, he bribed a passing bellboy to bring him mint juleps, which he sucked through the keyhole with a straw. One night in Louisville after a savage performance of Richard III, Booth's blood was aroused; the night called to him as to a tomcat. He tossed over his shoulder to his son that he "wanted to walk," and darted off into the darkness with Edwin hard after him. They came to a long, roofed-over market.

Booth bounded inside and began to pace up and down. Speaking never a word, he scowled, then chuckled maliciously. Sometimes he ran a short way, glancing back at Edwin. The city clocks struck midnight. Edwin and his father were still alternately walking and running up and down the market when a faint, cold dawn-breeze touched their faces. As the eastern sky turned rosy, Booth silently conceded defeat and allowed a silent Edwin, stumbling with exhaustion, to lead the way home. Again they were in Boston at the Pemberton House on Howard Street in a ground-floor bedroom. Between the bedroom and the hotel stables was a closet that reeked with the smells of straw and horse manure. Booth was fond of thrusting his head in and inhaling deeply; he considered the fumes healthful. Back from the theater one night he announced he "wasn't

prefaced his important speeches. He had drawn himself up for an exit and an exit must be made somewhere. Quick as thought he opened the closet and shut himself inside.

Edwin immediately offered to sing, to play the banjo. "I'm going out," said Booth. Edwin beat his father to the door and set his back against it. He was taller than Booth, but slighter and frailer. "You shall NOT go out!" he commanded, and into the words he put the whole force of the moral ascendancy he knew himself to hold over his father. Mr. Booth gave his son a long, penetrating, defiant stare of the kind he was famous for in his performances. He gave vent to the slow, stertorous sniff with which onstage he
sleepy."

FATHER AND SON

out.

39

Minutes passed. Edwin began to coax his father to come He implored him. He threatened him. There was no answer. At this point his brother, the stolid Junius, would have shrugged and walked off, but Edwin, completely unnerved, began to tug and strain at the locked door. Suppose his father were smothering to death? He sobbed with terror and had turned away desperately to run for help when the latch just clicked. Booth let himself out of the closet, breathing normally, and without so much as the flicker of one hooded eye in Edwin's direction, stalked regally across the room. If there
is

when

a quality that still distinguishes the king from the commoner the king undresses and climbs into bed, Booth had it.
light

His trembling subject put out the

side him.

and crept into bed be-

Edwin told these stories later. There were other stories, which he only hinted at. He could not always keep his father out of the gutter. Booth claimed to despise the life of the theater for its make-believe. Yet it was this make-believe that gave beauty to his own life, and it was the reality that was
Iwin Edwir grew used to the contrast. Often after a performance he hunted for his father through midnight streets in which he

was the only moving figure, down among the low-lying buildings of the waterfront where the wet sea-wind whistled after him around the corners and up the lanes, or out along the edge of town where the dark, open fields encroached on the few mean houses, to discover Booth at last, throned in some firetavern like a prince of vagabonds in the middle of a court of weaving revelers whose oaths were murderous and whose breaths were vomit-laden.
lit

Booth would offer to embrace the nearest cutthroat, call him "a learned Theban, a sage philosopher." And the actor's face, which an hour before under the stage lamps had shone sublimely with the passions of heroes, had become the face

When

of a satyr, with a loose, sly smile and sodden, bloodshot eyes. he saw his son, he would begin to slash the air beside his head with his right hand in the demented gesture that had

40
become

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
terrible to

Edwin, and

his voice

would be

coarse and

unfriendly.
his

'way, young man, go 'way." There were times also when Booth was not drunk, but when

"Go

Edwin could

mind wandered through frightful regions from which only call him back. And there were times when he
lines of Lear,

raved and struggled, shrieked the

Arms, arms, sword,

fire!

Corruption in the place!

When Edwin went with his father into the theater, he became acquainted not only with the isolation of an actor's life but also with a special loneliness. He was his father's only
companion in Booth's tragic, private world. Although Booth demanded and endured Edwin's presence, he almost never spoke to him affectionately or praised him. Yet the bond was strong between them, never denned but mutually recognized,
nourished by the father's need and the son's devotion. And as the years passed, with every journey and every somber crisis surmounted, the two grew closer together. Edwin lived in and for his father.
Ill

tore at his clothes, shook off his slender son like a fly coat sleeve, and sent him reeling into the corner.

from

his

They were in Boston rehearsing Richard HI when the stage manager, who played several small parts, turned to Edwin and muttered glumly: "This is too much work altogether for one man. You ought to play Tressel." Edwin was willing. His brother Junius had made his debut
in this tiny role inserted by Colley version of Richard. Accordingly,

Qbber

into the Gibber

Duke of Gloster, afterwards, Tressel, (his ist appearance on

King any stage)

MR. BOOTH
. .

EDWIN T. BOOTH

ran the notice in the playbill. Strictly, this was not Edwin's first appearance. At fourteen he had begged the manager of the Holhday Street Theater in Baltimore to give him a chance and had wavered onstage in a

FATHERANDSON

41

The Spectre Bridegroom. He was mortifyingly bad, part in hitched and stuttered, and was sick with stage fright; perhaps for this reason he preferred to forget the whole thing and
always said afterward that his debut had been made as Tressel on September 10, 1849. On this great night he shared his father's dressing room at the old Boston Museum. Mr. Booth lounged with his feet on the table while Edwin stood up for in rusty black Tressel is wearing mourninspection draped Edwin was just short of sixteen. "I was a sight/' he reing.

wore my hair down to my shoulders Eke a had a sallow complexion and a thin face." He also remembered how his father looked: a dazzling outsider in the kennel of a dressing room. Booth had on a belted purple velvet tunic sparkling with paste gems; his huge puffed sleeves were slashed with bright gold; so were his puffed breeches. His armhole cloak of a flaunting crimson was trimmed with gold and bordered with ermine. On his head was the traditional dark, curled wig of the tragedian; one corkscrew curl fell in front of each ear, and at the back a bunch of longer curls streamed down over his ample ermine collar. His crown, to be worn in Act III, lay ready near him, and glittering with the jewels given him long ago winking by a lady admirer in London. Now he snapped at Edwin:
called later. "I
I

woman.

"Who

was Tressel?"

"A messenger from the field of Tewksbury."

"What was his mission?" "To bear the news of the defeat of the king's party." "How did he make the journey?" "On horseback." "Where are your spurs?" Edwin faltered. "I hadn't thought of them." The gorgeous figure unbent a little. "Forgot them, did you?
Here, take mine." Edwin unbuckled
his

and shifted them to and a few minutes later a boyish, departed breaking voice, which faded out beyond the first rows, could be heard conveying bad news from the field of Tewksbury.

own boots. He

his father's spurs

4*
"It's

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

a great pity that eminent men should have such mediocre children," whispered former senator Rufus Choate, who sat out in front. His scene over, Edwin raced back to the dressing room,

where the

villain

of the play stood making absorbed preparacurtly.

tions for his

own entrance.

"Have you done well?" asked Booth

"I think so."

"Then give me spurs." And Booth departed for the stage in his turn, though not before he had pressed on Edwin's head his own worsted nightcap and invited him to take a sup of the warm gruel that he drank to soothe his nerves when act-

my

manner, even crustier than usual, made father hadn't been watching from the wing and reached the dressing room a minute in advance.
ing.

Something

in his

Edwin wonder

if his

This was the beginning. On September 27 Edwin played Cassio to his father's lago in Providence and two days later Wilford to Booth's Sir Edward. He began to be billed variously, in type only a little smaller than used for his father's name, as MASTER EDWIN BOOTH; MR. E. BOOTH (first appearance of) MR. BOOTH, JR. In New York the pair stopped on Broadway to greet an old actor, who asked Booth solemnly: "Upon which of your sons do you intend to confer your mantle?" Without speaking, Booth laid his hand on Edwin's head. "He had to reach up," Edwin remembered.
;

ances Mr. Booth was often reluctant.

this son.

Yet when managers begged for more of these joint appearHe had had other plans for

And

that

Ted

he fended off at least one request by growling played the banjo well and to "let him do a solo be-

tween the acts." But at the farm next summer he gleefully said Yes when Edwin permission for himself and his best friend, who was
pleaded
visiting him, to give a dramatic reading at the courthouse in Belair. The stage-struck friend was (John

"Sleepy" Sleeper) Clarke, Edwin's fellow pupil at Mr. Kearny's in Baltimore.

FATHERANDSON
O O

43

Old Joe, the family's most trusted retainer, was sent out into the country to post the playbills. He trudged for miles ringing a dinner bell and bawling: "O yes, yes, yes, tonight great
tragedy."

As Edwin and Sleepy rode into Belair that evening they saw
their playbills

smeared on every fencepost and outhouse.

NI asnofj-xnno^) 1VAIXS3j[ OIXVJWHQ

mi xy

the

bills

proclaimed.

Old

Joe,

who

couldn't read, had pasted

them all upside down.

one side of the packed courtroom sat all the men, Mr. Booth, looking pleased, among them; on the other side were the

On

women. The dinner

classical readings

bell clanged, sheets borrowed from the farm flew apart, and the countryfolk were treated to eight

including "Is this a dagger?" from Macbeth

done by Edwin and the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius from Julius Caesar. As a finale the two boys blacked their faces, cakewalked, and sang "coon songs"; Ted stroked his banjo and
Sleepy clacked the bones. By the next year Mr. Booth was advertised generally as being "supported by his son EDWIN BOOTH." Edwin acted Laertes, Macduff, Gratiano in The Merchant of Venice, Edgar in King Lear, Hemeya in The Apostate. He began to get the feel of an audience. They were doing Brutus by John Howard Payne one night in Richmond. In the part of the doughty old Roman for whom he was named Mr. Booth had just ordered his son Titus beheaded for treason. He clasped Edwin as Titus in a last embrace. "Farewell," he murmured, "eternally farewell!" and his the few words with the whole passionately sad tones, investing
terrible conflict between father and patriot, brought tears to the eyes of everyone watching, even of the supers dressed as Romans lictors to all eyes except those of a drunken man in

laugh in the wrong pkce, shattering the delicate structure of emotional tension so painstakingly wrought, often made the cheeks of veteran tragedians flush crimson, and their lips trem-

44
ble.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Booth was made of sterner material. He stared deliberately up in the direction of the rude noise, and improvising a line not
in the text but perfectly in keeping with his role, said in a voice that suddenly filled the theater: "Beware, I am the headsman!
I

am the executioner! "

Edwin,
at the

ward

time rigid in his father's arms, recalled after. . AH in fell "like a thunder-shock. front and on the stage seemed paralyzed, until the thunders of the spell." applause that followed broke
that the

words

York when Booth woke up from

night.

In April, 1851, they were playing at the National in New his nap one afternoon and announced that he "didn't feel like acting." It was a Richard

Edwin reminded

his father

how

vigorously he had re-

hearsed that day. Mr. Booth only smiled slyly. The hired carbasket full of the star's cosriage, with a wicker champagne on the back, waited at the door. tumes

strapped

"What will they do without you, Father?" screamed Edwin. "Go act it yourself," said Booth. The first person Edwin met at the theater was John R. Scott, the manager, who played Richmond. "No matter," Scott answered coolly after Edwin had breathlessly told his news. "You play Richard. Or else we'll have to dose the house."
Huddled willy-nilly into his father's tunic and cloak, which were much too wide, while one of the company holding the promptbook heard him repeat Richard's first soliloquy, Edwin was led into the wing like a lamb to the sacrifice. No explanation had been given the audience, and as he stepped onstage he was
greeted with the usual clapping. The applause hadn't wholly died down when an inquiring buzz filled the house, and there was a general turning of the playbill to the light to see the name printed there. Then silence fell and striking out into it Edwin forced his light voice into an approximation of his father's measured, chesty tones:

And

all the clouds that lowered upon our house In the deep boosom of the o-ce-an buried.

FATHERANDSON
the

45

Mr. Booth gave the word "ocean" three syllables, painting and sliding crash of massy waves, rise, the swoop forward, and on the word "buried" his deep, hollow tone dropped a

plummet to the
do, and

sea bottom.

Edwin

did this too.

The
was

audience caught the picture from

his voice as it

receptive trained to

twisting his features into his of bitter malignancy, he felt the house warm father's expression to his earnestness. He was launched. As the scenes flashed past, a wave of friendliness swept to-

when he limped forward,

ward him across the footlights and from the wings where all the actors not onstage were crowded three deep. The greenroom was deserted. John Scott hovered protectively close. In the part of Richmond he bore down on his young Richard, sword in hand, with a mingling of triumph and tenderness. It was all over and then like music came the longed-for surprisingly soon,
ovation.

Scott hugged Edwin, gripped him by the arm to draw him before the curtain, and die two stood there bowing and bowing with the traditional humility of the entertainer. "You see before " "the worthy scion of a noble stock! and you," shouted Scott, to Edwin out of the side of his mouth, 'Til bet they don't know

what that means." The applause, which seemed to be produced by one pair of hands, blazed up again, making the boards under them tingle and vibrate. It was this night's applause that Edwin heard for the rest of his life. Until this night he might have been happier as or as a lawyer, his father's most recent dream a cabinetmaker because Richard Booth had been a lawyer. Now it was for him too late. Retreat where he might, the compulsion of this apin his memory's ear would draw him back plause faintly roaring A capricious destiny had unfitted him for any life but one. again. "Well," demanded Destiny coldly when Edwin arrived back
dingy quarters, "how did it go?" Booth was still precisely as Edwin had left him. Yet Edwin always suspected his father had gone out, had been in the theater, and moving fast, had got home just ahead of him. Later this spring Edwin was engaged independently of his
at their

46
father

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

by die manager of the company in Baltimore in which he had made his flop in The Spectre Bridegroom. "Let him try it," said Booth damply. So for six dollars a week Edwin played utility, and while his soul yearned for Hamlet and Othello, most of his parts were in
farces like
as

The Dumb Belle or The

Valet de Sham, which, crude

they were, called for a quick professional pace

trifles, Trilling his

and shrewd

timing. The unlicked boy who had played Richard to applause

blundered through these

laughs,

and what was

unforgivable, the laughs of the stars he supported. His voice was feeble. His handling of stage business was

clumsy.

It

maddeningly began to get about that he hadn't inherited his father's

talent, let alone his genius.

Mr. Booth did nothing to help. Out of his reservoir of experience he offered his son neither advice nor praise. He hardly ever spoke to him of acting or to any of his children, who re-

membered only

that

on two unforgettable evenings

at

home

he had read aloud to them Shakespeare's Coriolanus and King John, read all the parts, including the women's, so convincingly that little Asia asked without thinking: "Do you ever play Constance, Father?" "I should not look

queenly," her father answered.

musingly recalled youth acting of Edmund Kean. "He had doubtless resolved," writes Edwin loyally, "to make me work my way unaided; and though his seeming indifference was painful then, it compelled me to exercise my callow wits. It made me think"
his

Another

night, alone with Edwin, Booth in England and the marvelous

IV
In spite of Booth's drinking and fits of madness, his family adored him. The younger children did not see him drunk, and when he was deranged their mother his
protected authority. So, although their father was a despised player and to subject a "calamity" that was never spoken of, the shelter and discithe Booths a sense pline of the family circle had

given

younger

FATHERANDSON
Edwin left home to go with his father,

47

of security, of being like other children. But about the time the surface of this famlife had begun to tremble and crack, exposing for the first ily time the ugly secret hidden under it. In November, 1 846, Booth's real wife, Adelaide, had arrived in Baltimore. Their son Richard had written to his mother that a great wrong was being put on her and on him, the legiti-

mate heir. Adelaide

sailed from Liverpool as soon as she could. Baltimore she looked Exeter Street, "where On reaching up as she wrote to her sister Therese. She would the Holmes live," not dignify the members of this family by a name they had no right to. Booth was off on tour but she saw his house "it has not a very grand appearance." Then Booth came home, and her lawyer "fell on his back like a bomb." It was all no good

for him to rage and threaten.

assailable.

The

case against

him was un-

Adelaide had established residence in Baltimore, taking rooms with her son, and sometimes confronting Booth when he was
in a stall at the market. selling his vegetables

The

air

was blue

with her maledictions. Once she penetrated as far as the farm and railed at Mary Ann. Not until March, 1851, did she give up hope of winning Booth back and file suit for divorce. Booth attempted no defense. The divorce was granted, and on May 10, 185 1 (he had turned fifty-five on the first of May) he married his Mary Ann. The Booth children bore the knowledge of their parents'
adultery and their

own

bastardy
it

by

shutting their eyes to

it.

Like their
scars
it

father's calamity,

was driven underground; the

left on them were kept bravely hidden. Asia, who later her father's life, airily dismissed his first marriage as "a wrote boyish mesalliance" and Edwin, writing to the newspapers some years after Mr. Booth's death, simply denied that his father had ever been married except to Edwin's mother. As for Adelaide Booth, she took to drink and died broken-hearted in Baltimore in 1858. Her only mourner was her devoted son

Richard.

48

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

When his parents were married, Edwin was playing in stock month later his brother Junius sailed for San in Baltimore. Francisco, and with June went Harriet Mace, a pretty actress

from Boston, to whom he was no more married than his father had been, until very recently, to Mary Ann Holmes. their small daughJunius had deserted his wife Clementine and
ter Blanche

and

set

up housekeeping with

Harriet.

He

was

an actor and had showing himself a much better manager than in San Francisco. been hired to run the Jenny Lind Theater He and Hattie were gone eleven months. In May, 1852, having back east across the Isthmus of Panama, he made the

long trip turned up at the farm bringing his mistress with him. Neither of his parents was in a position to object. Junius came out of the West like Lochinvar, and described to his family the land of gold beyond the Sierras. It was four years since gold had been discovered in California, but the caravans of the fortune hunters still toiled westward to the strains of "Oh! Susannah."
I'm off for Californy with

my washbowl on my knee,

ran the forty-niners' version. The profiteers had soon followed the pioneers. There were easier ways to make a fortune than to delve it out of the river beds with pick and shovel. Already the gold dust from the pannikins was being exchanged by the handful and

diggers' hatful for expensive French wines, Cuban cigars, and Dickens' novels in paper covers. And the actors had come, for above all
else the

their

The West would welcome him. was not so much the gold that attracted Booth as the new horizon. He was tired of travel and cold to fame, or so he considered. He was growing old, yet there was time for one more adventure, a last world to conquer, and the thought tempted
father?
It

miners loved a show and raced down in coaches from mountain camps. Junius offered his father an engagement at the Jenny Lind. All the world was going west. Why not his

him. Late in the spring of 1852 Booth said good-by to his family.

FATHER AND SON

set off

49

with Junius and Harriet for New York to catch He the steamer for the Isthmus. But Junius was out of the habit of
ill"; this

chaperoning his father. In New York Booth suddenly "fell was the family version. What really happened was that he gave Junius the slip and danced off on a spree with one of his seedy chums, an actor named George Spear, making them all miss the boat. While they were waiting for another ship, Booth drove back to Baltimore to collect his indispensable son, and when he left for New York a second rime, Edwin left with him. He, too, was headed for the land where the tumbling rivers tossed up precious particles, the golden land at the end of the rainbow California. He was eighteen.

PART TWO

CHAPTER

Seeing the Elephant

Such wind as scatters young men through the world, To seek their fortunes further than at home,

Where

small experience grows. The Taming of the Shrew,

Act

1,

scene 2

CRANING over the rail of the ship Illinois as she steamed past Mexico and drew near Colon, the passengers babbled of the conquistadors, of Ponce de Leon, De Soto, and Cortes. The sodden George
Spear, otherwise with the Booths.
sisted

known

"Old Spudge," was still very much There was no getting rid of him; he had inas

on coming.

From Colon they were all poled up the Chagres River in flat-bottomed bungas by Indian boatmen who sang "Oh! Susannah." The water was bright green with the reflected foliage. The heavy air smelled like a hothouse. From a mile or so off
could be heard the thump of native drums and the whimpered
na, na,

na of natives announcing

a festival.

At Gorgona the party climbed on muleback for the journey the night in through the jungle across the Isthmus. They spent a hut by the trail. Harriet was given the only hammock. The

men

curled uncomfortably on trunks and wine barrels, each

53

54
with
his

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

listening to the

loaded pistol beside him. Edwin lay awake, nervously mad-sounding jungle cries and the muttering of the dark-skinned guides inside the hut as they sat on their haunches in a circle sharpening their machetes. Somewhere on him he carried a shrunken, withered remnant, a precious
his caul.

talisman against danger and accidents

Next morning they were up and away at daybreak, and soon a salt breeze from the Pacific freshened the jungle air. In the grass-grown plazas and ruined cloisters of Panama City the street boys whistled "Yankee Doodle" and the senoritas twanged their guitars from balconies and caroled "Old Black Joe" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." The city was choked
Francisco.

with fortune hunters killing time until the next ship to San Hundreds had been stricken with cholera and mysterious, shaking fevers, and the church bells chimed confor those whose wives would never see them again; tinually the chimes were gay and silvery. Below in the harbor rocked a fleet of native canoes, and white pelicans rode the Pacific
waters.

ship and sailed north. As they left the cool northwest trade winds began to blow. They tropics, sighted the sails of clippers on the horizon; now and then they

The Booths boarded

heard strong voices singing chanteys from whalers far out to sea. On July 28 they entered the Golden Gate and next the broad harbor of San Francisco, which was a forest of masts flying the flags of all nations. On Telegraph Hill the black

wooden "arm" was raised to signal their arrival. Out swarmed the bumboats to ferry ashore the passengers. Edwin stepped nimbly after his father, who strode onto the
dock, a pioneer carrying a carpetbag. All the actors in San Francisco were on Long Wharf to meet them. Tom Maguire, gambler and owner of the Jenny Lind Theater, had sent a brass band, which crashed into the inevitable but still stirring "Oh! Susannah."
Junius and Harriet, whom their western friends called "the handsomest couple in Frisco," waved back greetings at the shouts of, "Welcome home, June!"

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

somehow

55

But most of the attention was on the rough, travel-worn, gallant figure of Mr. Booth, who met the crowd's interest with the level gaze of a man well used to it as he shouldered his way to the waiting carriage with his two sons flanking him, Junius on one side pointing out landmarks and Edwin

on the other staring hungry-eyed.

Rows

of tindery frame houses with

their fronts bordered the street that

wooden scallops across wound steeply and crook-

edly up from Long Wharf. Through gaps between the hills the dusty winds blew and blew, making movement everywhere. Many-colored tents pitched above town billowed and tugged
gas
its

at their pegs. The harbor was ruffled with whitecaps, in the street lamps flared restlessly.

and the

city was Portsmouth Square. Along four sides bearded settlers in blue jackets and black trousers cut on Spanish lines, high-booted miners whose shoulder-length hair showed they were just down from the diggings, gamblers wearing starched shirt bosoms and diamond studs as big as shoved their way or strolled, and every so often darted peas, out of the paths of fine carriages or from under the hoofs of caracoling horses ridden by native Californians in serapes, sombreros,

The pulsing heart of the

and

spurs.

The Jenny Lind Theater, which had been built by the sleepyeyed gambler Maguire, stood at a corner of the square near the most notorious of the gambling hells. Its company included June Booth and Harriet, who passed as man and wife, and featured the Chapmans, William and Caroline, who were on their father's brother and sister and had been brought up showboat, the first to ply the Mississippi. Every playhouse and gambling house had its bar. The windows lined with bright bottles caught Mr. Booth's eye on his way from the wharf, and he and Old Spudge romped off tofirst night in San gether. They were gone all night, Booth's r rancisco. But it was Edwin who was late next morning for the opening rehearsal and languid when he got there. His father
Bella Union,

56
come!"

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

screamed with annoyance. "That won't do! Come, come,

Edwin

started over, in

Richmond's speech beginning

The weary sun hath made a golden set.

"For God's sake!" barked Booth. "Where does the sun set? Well, show it then! Point to it! Nod your head! Damn it, DO SOMETHING!" Booth played for two weeks to packed houses. He was supported by Junius and Edwin. At the end of his fortnight the whole company was turned out of the theater because Maguire, who meant to build another playhouse, had sold the Jenny Lind to the city for a town hall. So Junius engaged his
father (at a large guarantee), the Chapmans, George Spear, Edwin, and some others to act in Sacramento under his man-

agement. They all steamed upriver, a ten-hour trip. Sacramento was smaller than San Francisco, tougher and cruder and closer to the mines. Covered wagons choked the rutted streets and the miners streamed down from the mountains, not in their Sunday best as in Frisco but clay-caked, weather-stained, and tired out. San Francisco was infested with rats; Sacramento's plague was bedbugs.

A sudden depression had hit parts of California, one of those

puzzling fits of caution and pessimism that clapped down on the gold country every year or so. The Booths opened confidently at Sacramento's American Theater, but after the first night their houses were thin. Finally all three took benefits.

For

his own Edwin played Venice Preserved. Before the

Jaffier to his father's Pierre in

on the doorstep of
the

meandering, ing a black velvet robe.

didn't

his primitive dressing room and watched thoughtful approach of his younger son wear-

performance

Mr. Booth squatted

"You look like Hamlet," he observed balmily. "Why you try Hamlet tonight?" "If I ever have another benefit I will," murmured Edwin out of his brown study.
Already Mr. Booth had had a bellyful of California. He had spent almost his entire take from San Francisco. He decided

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

57

to go home, and he demanded pitilessly that Junius pay him the full guarantee for Sacramento in spite of die lack of

The family, though never criticizing Mr. Booth, always thought

hard in him. In San Francisco his sons saw him off at Long Wharf exactly two months after his arrival. Booth sailed alone, without a guardian. Edwin had determined to stay behind. He was not yet nineteen, and the West had laid her powerful hand on him. Moved by one of the premonitions that stir in men with a strong sense of destiny, Booth had some vague notion that his career had not long to run, and before sailing he lifted up his Richard's jeweled crown, from which the light flashed in a crisscross of filaments, and deposited it in the eager hands of Junius. "I shan't need this any more," he said. Yet he was in a rollicking mood when he reached the wharf
this insistence rather

profits.

"Fm

early, swinging his carpetbag, to superintend the stowing away of his luggage. The sailor in charge was too slow to suit him. no flunky," the man growled when Booth snapped at him

to get a

move

on.
sharply.

What are you, sir?" Booth asked "Fm a thief," sneered the man.

This happened to be a line from the play Bertram, in which Booth often acted. He picked up the cue. "Your hand, comrade, Fm a pirate!" he cried, and the sulky seaman heaved himself erect and stretched out his hand with
a broad grin.

n
California had an expression: "Seeing the elephant." It had been the title of a skit satirizing the gold rush that had run in San Francisco for months. "To see the elephant" meant to trek hopefully to the gold country and be (what most people were) viciously disappointed. The West took up the ironic idiom. All rugged travel, hunger, and heartbreaking bad luck were "seeing the elephant." Miners had elephants stamped on their letter paper and daubed them in red and black on their cabin
walls.

58
mento.
first,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
he lingered on with Junius and Har-

The Booths had caught a glimpse of the elephant in SacraNow Edwin got a good look from trunk to tail. At
after his father left,

riet in their

house on Telegraph Hill, an exasperating guest. no work, he spent his time drinking in saloons where Having the bars were still warm from his father's instep. His nineteenth was mightily relieved when birthday came and went. Junius Willmarth Waller, an actor-manager organizing a company to

Ted for the tour. "The name play the mining towns, engaged Waller. will help me anyway," said Junius had learned a thing or two about how to survive in California: it was the survival of the cautious. His brother was a brash kid, and Junius advised him before starting out to "put
a slug," which was a piece of gold worthy fifty dollars, "in the bottom of your trunk, forget you have it, and when things are at their worst bring out your slug." Waller had hired George Spear, too, and Dave Anderson, another friend of Mr. Booth's. Anderson was a middle-aged widower with a humorous, kind face. He remembered well, he told Edwin, meeting him back East when Edwin was a child clinging to his father's hand. Before Mr. Booth left Frisco he had begged Anderson to keep an eye on Ted. At Sacramento they all changed steamers and churned up the Feather River to Marysville. Then, piling into a coach,

they jolted for miles across plains whose horizons were ringed at night by the red pillars of campfires. They inched in silence, muffling all harness noise, through bandit country where mustachioed highwaymen like Joaquin Murietta could be expected to take shape silently out of the brush. Now and then a grizzly lumbered across the trail. Through the night the coyotes howled. The sturdy horses braced their hoofs as they
picked their way down pebbly forest paths. From the hilltops the swaying, singing coachload glimpsed an occasional white tent roof or a thread of smoke showing the whereabouts of some lonely fortune hunter. Some of the mining towns had real playhouses with a sign over the door announcing THEATER or DRAMATIC HALL in five-

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

foot
letters,

59

and inside kerosene footlights and drop curtains of elephants or of a miner recumbent, with painted pictures his pick by his side, dreaming of home. But often traveling actors played in a calico-draped saloon on a stage of boards held up by sawhorses, or in somebody's barn or warehouse where the all-male audience planted stools on the dirt floor
and belligerently staked off places like claims. Waller's troupe stopped first in Nevada City, a clump of shacks in a clearing among the tall pines, and Edwin acted his
first

lago.

They

played next in Grass Valley, then in Rough

and Ready, then in distant Downieville on the North Yuba at the deep bottom of a valley high in the mountains. The more remote the camp, the more electric the tension in the audience of tough-looking miners who sat with their guns handy in their If you could capture them they showered you with gold laps.

you disappointed them they tossed you in a blanket. them knew the classical texts by heart and yowled Many with irritation when the smallest cut was made.
pieces;
if

of

The actors were in Downieville when a tremendous blizzard

Waller herded them back along the trail as far as Grass Valley. Here the snow lay twelve feet deep in places, and food was so short and fantastically expensive that Edwin's precious slug, fetched out of his trunk to meet the emergency, bought the company no more than one dinner. They forced themselves out and on again to Nevada City, hoping to earn enough there to pay for die steamer trip home. But when they reached town on an icy December night they found the drastruck.

matic hall dark.

For many days neither food nor letters had got through to the camps. The stranded miners had no money for theaters. The stranded actors huddled around the stove in the dismal hotel and began to swap stories out of their accumulated experience of other catastrophes. Edwin flung away and wandered off alone down the main street, which led out of die camp into a no man's land pitted like a moon landscape with gulches left by the gold diggers. The snow made the night look almost bright and die raw holes

60
sculptured.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
He
was on
his

way back when he saw

a lantern

bobbing, heard shouts and running footsteps. "Holla!" rang George Spear's voice, sounding half-frozen,

"Ted,

is

that

you?"

"Yes, what's up?" "There's a mail just in and a message for you."

"What news?" "Not good news for you, my boy."

had premonitions, true he asked instantly, "is my faguesses at dark events. "Spear," ther dead?"

Edwin,

like his father, occasionally

Spear nodded slowly.

Mr. Booth, jaunty and unchaperoned, had arrived back

across the Isthmus; not without mishap, for on the way his in it most of his gold-coast earnings, was purse, which had Orleans his old friend Noah Ludlow, manager stolen. In

New

of the St. Charles Theater, arranged a series of six performances that netted Booth over a thousand dollars. He ended the engagement with The Iron Chest, followed by his favorite comic

The Wag of Windsor in afterpiece called The Review, or which he played John Lump, a Yorkshire boy ("Fze zimple,
Fze willing to lam"), wearing a red wig, tiny hat, striped stockings, and a flowered chintz waistcoat. Booth had caught a bad cold in New Orleans. He was beginning to feel iLL when he left there on the steamer /. S.
zur, but

Chenoweth bound up the Mississippi for Cincinnati. The first day out he drank the cloudy river water, which most experienced travelers never touched, and by that evening he had a passenger named Simpson noticed him pacing high fever. the saloon, his hands behind his back. That's the tragedian, Mr. Booth," Simpson was told, and then he realized that he had the actor on the stage of the St. Charles. just seen and applauded There was no doctor on board. The second day out Booth kept to his cabin, peering from his small window at the brown Mississippi bobbing with refuse and the deadly flat banks where the only signs of human life were the wood-

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

cutters' huts

6l

After sunset the sky glowed smoke peppered with scarlet uncoiled from the ship's funnels backward over the sparks
stilts.

perched on

weirdly from

forest fires; black

water.

The germ Booth had picked up settled in his bowels. He ky

bunk, weakened by vomiting and diarrhea, until the door opened and the passenger Simpson stuck his head inside to offer his help. Rousing from his fever to scan his admirer with a long, keen look, which the young man never forgot, Booth had the porter clean out the vilely neglected accepted. Simpson and change the sick man's bed and body linen. In spite cabin of all care Booth wasted away fast. The Chenoweth crawled north, touching in the old familiar order at the southern ports he knew so well. On the third day out his jaws began to stiffen. The attentive Simpson dipped a rag in brandy and forced it between his teeth. But Booth made a stab to push the cloth away and muttered faintly: "No more in this world." day later, when he could hardly articulate, he seemed to be telling Simpson that he had suffered a great deal off in California and been exposed to many hardships. Simpson, who was
in his

to send

loss. "Have you a message wife?" he suggested. your At the word "wife" a look of longing passed over Booth's face. His eyes rolled feebly to stare into die other man's, but

young and

inexperienced, felt at a

response was unintelligible. pray for you?" Simpson asked finally. Tears filled Booth's eyes and he bowed his head. When Simpson had finished and bent over to smooth the pillow, Booth tried gratefully to raise his arms and twine them around the good stranger's
his slurred

"May

nee

going, Booth's voice strengthened. He looked appealingly at die man sitting beside him and said in his deep, melancholy tones, with all his old forcefulness: "Pray, pray, pray."

On the fifth day out, November 30, 1852, Booth died. It was one in the afternoon; they were just below Louisville and the dinner bell had rung for the other passengers. As he felt himself

62

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Mrs. Booth, summoned by telegraph, claimed her husband's body in Cincinnati. The fearful trials of the life he had led her

were dismissed and forgotten. "Yes," she

said sadly, when told her the story of his last days, "that was they just what he thought right to do; to endure patiently, to suffer without a

complaint, and to trouble no one."

So Booth came home.

He

lay in the dark green-and-gold-

paj>ered parlor in Baltimore. The mirrors were shrouded superstitiously with linen sheets, and a bust of Shakespeare was set

with whom he had played his farewell performance, wound bands of bkck crepe on their arms. "What, Booth dead?" cried Rufus Choate when he heard the news. "Then there are no more actors! "

head of the coffin. And as Booth lay there, his eyes halfopen, there was still so much life in his face, so much humor and intelligence, that a spasm of hope seized his last audience and doctors were sent for. But this was not a trance. Far to the south in New Orleans the members of Ludlow's company,
at the

Snow fell in Baltimore on the day Booth's body was laid in a vault to wait for spring burial. And it was falling in Nevada City in slow, circling flakes as George Spear, holding his lantern low to light the path, guided Edwin back to the hotel. The
picture of his father's lonely last journey even more than his death put the boy in a passion of tears and he sobbed out that

he "should have gone with him." Like

his

mother,

all

he could

remember now was the goodness and charm of the man who
had died; the cruel faults had dropped away. At the miserable hotel his brother vagabonds gathered around to comfort him, but the boy could only repeat between sobs: "I should have

gone with him," until kind Dave Anderson wrapped his arm around him and led him away. The letter with the news of death had been sent to Waller by Junius, who begged that someone in the company would tell Edwin. A longing swept over Edwin to be with his brother. They two had been the last of the family to see their father alive. When next morning he heard of a plan put forward by

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

a

63

to tramp through the breast-high snow to miles away, he instantly said he would Marysville fifty go with them. Out into the craglike drifts they plunged,
reckless

few

men

single file, with each man treading in the footsteps of the man in front. They slept that night in an isolated shack, and Edwin

walking

a banjo he found there and crooned die songs he picked up used to sing for his father to the old mountain woman who had taken them in; the soft, friendly syllables called up a little Southland in the middle of the wind-lashed, frozen waste. By of the second day they pushed into Marysville. Ednightfall borrowed ten dollars to pay for the steamer down the win Feather to Sacramento and from there to San Francisco. At Junius' house he read two letters that had arrived from their mother. Mrs. Booth advised her sons not to come home. She meant to live at the farm with Rose and the younger
children.

What she did not tell them was that no money at all had been found on their father's body perhaps Simpson was not
the first person to glide into Booth's stateroom. It was when Ludlow wrote to her in condolence that she learned of the large sum he had paid her husband in New Orleans. She had only a few dollars to go on with, but there was not a word of this in

her

letters.

Stay in the West, she encouraged her sons devotedly, for to a Marylander who had never been there, California was still the

golden land.
Ill

Six months later San Francisco had a new personality. Friends called him Ted or Ned or Eddie, but he was known to the public as "young Booth," "Booth the younger," often simply as "Booth." People wheeled in their tracks for a sight of him tearing to rehearsal in midmorning on a high, white horse. He wore a black serape over his red shirt, a slouch hat, and Hessian boots, clamped a stubby pipe between his teeth, had a mass of black hair and a face Uke a cameo. On that first harrowing trip through the camps this young-

64
est Booth had

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

been "never despondent," writes J. J. McCloskey, another of Waller's troupers, but had shown the spirit of "a true Bohemian." Now as the shock of his father's death wore off, Edwin Booth's natural gaiety, so long kept under, spurted be his way, but up. He was quiet as ever, this would always

when his face unexpectedly gleamed

watch out, boys, to find a turkish towel boiling in your stewpot instead of stew, or your last clean shirt borrowed off your line. At rehearsals he

was the life of the company. "His guying," says McCloskey, "was very neat and quick."

And with the overbearing pressure

of his father's genius re-

moved, Booth began to develop a stage presence of his own. Every evening guests on the hotel porch across from the theater could hear the applause that safuted the

new favorite's

en-

trance.

In San Francisco Booth had found prosperity stealing back, with Junius in work again as manager of San Francisco Hall, the new playhouse buut by Tom Maguire. Junius had offered his brother a job. man who had known young Booth in Boston saw him for the first time in the West sitting on the prompt table, swinging his feet, in the middle of the stage of San Francisco Hall. Booth was wearing a tattered hat, short monkey jacket, and burst-out shoes. He was broke, but gay as a grig and ready to try anything. And this was what he did try. Comedies of manners like The Critic and She Stoops to Conquer operettas, farces, and rowdy burlesques of local celebrities were all grist to the humming

mill of Maguire's new theater. Some people grumbled that the place stank like a spittoon the audiences used it as one. The

up were tawny with tobacco juice; you didn't dare sit down without looking close, and every few weeks the theater had to be shut for cleaning and airing. Others complained that its shows were thrown together. They certainly were, but they went with a swing. The little playhouse glowed like a lantern and rocked with the guffaws of hundreds of
walls halfway

miners

who groaned

in the song choruses,

at the villain's entrance, joined hoarsely and hurled buckskin purses stuffed

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

with gold nuggets
at their

65

chosen actors, male or female.

The

stars

were the two Chapmans. Edwin often played the

lover onstage opposite Caroline- Sometimes he cried when he thought of his father. In long rambles, which like his father he took alone, he explored the beach for miles, collecting gulls' back in the greenroom he tipped them out eggs in his hat, and as trophies into the women's laps. Most of the actors lived near Junius and Harriet on TeleHill with its view of the harbor. But out near the old

graph

Mission Dolores, which stood by the racetrack and the bull arena, far out of town on a winding road among sand dunes and chaparral where leafless plants grew in the shape of ghastly antlers and the wind blew in strong, there was a smaller, much
fashionable actors' colony known as Pipesville, and this was where the younger Booth lived. Dave Anderson had struggled back from the mines with the rest of Waller's troupe as soon as rain washed away the snow, and he and Booth went to live together in Pipesville in
less

a whitewashed shack they built themselves. In Pipesville everybody was a bachelor. They all shared the work, all except Booth, who refused to do one stroke. His eyes danced, he smiled his almost invisible smile. "It's a poor company that can't support one gentleman,'' he said charmingly. Early each morning a bugle was blown, and the actors threw on scrapes and raced their broncos into town to rehearsal. Booth and Anderson put themselves down in the city directory their joke, for their "ranch" as "comedians and rancheros" was their two-room shack. They would jounce together into Frisco in a buckboard, pull in across from a butcher's, and Anderson would stand up, shaking the reins, and bawl out: "Kid?" meaning beef kidneys, their stand-by for dinner being
so cheap.

With an actor named Barnes they used to gallop out to a roadhouse called The Lakes on the edge of a pond six miles from the city. One night Booth wheeled Anderson home in a handcart. Another night as they sat around drinking and spouting fierce lines from their plays like

66

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Now could I drink hot blood

or
Here's the smell of blood
still,

two

them for members of the gang of the Mexican bandit Joaquin Corrilla, who was terrorizing the back to Pipesville. countryside, and trailed them furtively the vigilantes, and Edwin had joined Junius was a member of the volunteer fire brigade; the engine his company was attached to was named "Old Dewdrop." For his debut at San Francisco Hall Junius had appropriately cast him in the part of Fred Jerome, hero of the melodrama The American Fireman. At the rise of the curtain on Act II, when Fred and his mother are eating supper in their humble apartment: "O Freddetectives mistook
eric," sighs

something dreadful
FRED.

Mrs. Jerome, "I have a strange foreboding, was about to happen/

as if

Now,
.

so happy.
Fire! I

m off, mother.

don't talk in such a melancholy way, when I feel . . (Distant fire bell heard.) Hark! what's that?

No, no not without your supper! FRED. Supper and do you think Fd stop for that? No! for lose their all, while I remain to eat, some poor family may which, were I present, I might aid in saving; the meal would choke me did I attempt to feast while others suffer. No, no,
MRS.
J.

never. (Exit hastily, center door.)

MRS.

J.

fortunate!

Brave boy! Heaven give you strength to save the un(Watches off center door, as scene closes. Music.)
did

Dandy Cox, a strutting little darky in a then Colonel Mannering in Guy Mannering, blackface farce, then Furibond in The Yellow Dwarf. When the date was set
for a benefit for the theater's scene designer, John Fairchild, it to choose the play, and he asked was Fairchild's
privilege

Then Booth

young Booth, over Junius' objections, to act Richard III. This was only the second time Booth had ever acted Richard, yet now there were moments when a startling authority in his tone
or gesture showed the presence of a strong dramatic power,

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

67

even occasionally the tentative working of an original mind. Harvard graduate named Ferdinand Ewer, a scholar and editor, was standing in the wing that night watching Booth breathe flame onstage. Ewer saw (what Junius failed to see)
the aura of a distinguished future surrounding the unconscious head of the absorbed nineteen-year-old. Four days later it was Booth's own benefit. journalist friend

had proposed he play Hamlet and the actors standing around had bayed with laughter. "Too young," said Junius,. also roarThen Booth approached his brother and murmured of the ing. he had made their father. Good-natured June was not promise one to thwart a pledge around which death had hung a halo. Booth first appeared as Hamlet on April 25, 1853, with George Spear as Polonius, Caroline Chapman as Ophelia, and William

Chapman

as

the First Gravedigger.

Advance work had been done in the press to "whoop her up," and all Booth's pals who were not performing sat out in front as a claque. Mr. Booth had had a true eye: when Edwin made his entrance he did look like Hamlet, the Hamlet of a him an ovation that was almost fairy tale. The claque gave too obvious, at which he made a cold little bow. But the

moment
speech
"father,"

his friends

heard the quality of

his voice in his first

they knew he was

I'll

"safe" and relaxed.

On

the

word

call

thee Hamlet, King, father,

and again on the

line

He was a man, take him for all in all,

there

Booth put across the clear image in his mind so that everyone who had known Junius Brutus Booth instantly thought

of him.

"You
claque.

fellows overdid

it,"

Booth objected afterward to

his

"Highly creditable," wrote Ferdinand Ewer in the Daily Alta California. "We can even predict a high degree of success for the promising young artist when he shall have overcome a

68

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

few disagreeable faults

in intonation and delivery, and reached a profound conception of the part." Junius buttonholed his brother: "Yes, you've had a wonderful success, but you still have a lot to learn." The very next night Booth touched earth again, being cast

by Junius for Captain Absolute in The Rivals, and this same month Junius slammed him into Mr. Dombey in Dombey and
Son.
It

was now

that San Francisco

Catherine Sinclair arrived, the woman whom Edwin Forrest had sued for divorce on the ground of adultery. The newsSinclair (she had taken papers gloated over the case, but Mrs. wore the dirty publicity like a smart her maiden name back) dress; it somehow enhanced her charm and fastidiousness, made her heartbroken ex-husband look brutal. She appeared at San Francisco Hall and Booth played opposite her Petruchio to her Katherine in Garrick's mutilated version of The Taming

began to notice him. Mrs.

of the Shrew.
Katherine Petruchio

MRS.

C N. SINCLAIR, LATE MRS. FORREST

ED. BOOTH

In May he acted his first Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing to the Beatrice of Caroline Chapman, at the end of June his first Romeo to her Juliet, and in September Shylock to Mrs.
Sinclair's Portia. Ferdinand Ewer soberly advised him in print to study his parts better. It seemed to Junius that Ted's head was swelling, and he jerked him back to a regime of low com-

edy, which included the role of Givemsum in the burlesque called Buy-it-Dear! 'Tis made of Cashmere. In one of the overnight turnabouts of California, Mrs.

became the manager and Junius and Edwin her employees. She had leased a new theater, the Metropolitan, a very grand house against which smelly little San Francisco Hall couldn't hope to compete, and she opened here on Christinas Eve, 1853, in The School for Scandal. She had engaged young Booth for juvenile leads. Soon he played opposite Laura Keene,
Sinclair

typical

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

the English comedienne

69

whom

Mrs. Sinclair had signed for

guest appearances. In England "Red Laura" had been a barmaid and then the wife of John Taylor, a tavern keeper who, having done something disreputable, had been deported. She had gone on the exile and soon afterward sailed with her stage after Taylor's two daughters (her "nieces" to the public) to York,

New

where she was well received until she broke her engagement at Wallack's Theater and decamped to Baltimore with a gambler

named

Lutz.

Then

she drifted west, a fragile, nervous,

goldish-red hair and

imperious woman with sloping shoulders,

wide, angelic, come-hither eyes. She fluttered her gold lashes and wore frilly clothes, usually white. Her voice even offstage had a tender little sob in it, except when she raised it in peacock screams of rage. She opened at the Metropolitan in The Love Chase, with

Booth supporting her. An indefatigable and painstaking artist, which Booth was not, she considered her reception was less than her due and furiously blamed her "failure" on "Booth's bad acting." Booth fluttered his black lashes in the ghost of a wink and quipped to McCloskey that he "felt it Keenely"
of the rhythm of "Oh! Susannah" churned in the Something of Californians. It was a restless rhythm that urged them blood

forward:

Oh! Susannah, don't you cry for me!

Out in California, forward meant westward. By 1 854 a number of actors had left to try their luck in Australia. The farthermost land beckoned to Booth, and when his engagement with Mrs. Sinclair ended, he, Anderson, Laura Keene, and a handful of bold spirits decided to push on over the water. They sailed from San Francisco the last day of July. Booth wrote to his family before leaving, bragging of the money he would make, but a letter from Junius advised them not to count on
this.

70

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

It was October, the Australian spring, when the actors' ship was guided by the pilot boat through the needle's-eye gap of Sydney Heads into Sydney Harbor. They opened in Sydney in The Lady of Lyons, with Miss Keene as Pauline and Booth

featured as Claude Melnotte. After two weeks of so-so business they went on to Melbourne, where Booth turned twenty-one. To celebrate his manhood he had his picture taken, then gave Miss Keene the

had struggled to control his high jinks) , rushed out of slip (she the hotel and drank himself dizzy, rushed back and into the hotel yard, where he planted the Stars and Stripes and bellowed truculently that America was a bigger, better country than Britain. And while they were in Melbourne he and Anderson went for a stroll outside the city and lay down luxuriously in the shade of a coconut palm. Suddenly some instinct made Booth second later an enormous coconut crashed roll over. split on the spot where he had been lying. It was his caul that saved him, he whispered awestruck. Business was terrible in Melbourne. The Americans' hopes drooped until at last they packed up their costumes in their champagne baskets and embarked for home. But when the ship touched at Honolulu, one of the first sights they saw ashore was a faded frame building with the magic word THEATER on it, so with .their last fifty dollars they paid a month's rent and began preparations for a Hawaiian season. Halfway

sively

through rehearsals Booth and Laura Keene quarreled exploand Miss Keene flounced out of the company to con-

tinue

home

alone.

This was Booth's breaking-in as a manager. They announced Richard HI. The new king of the Islands, Kamehameha IV, yearned to see the show, but being in mourning for his father, the old king, he dared not appear so an armchair was publicly; rolled into the wing for him and there he sat, flanked by a smart French aide and a strapping Kanaka warrior. Booth had heard of a white man in town who could do Miss Keene's part of Lady Anne. The man turned out to have been noth-

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

ing but a grip, or stagehand, back in the States.

71

He

had a

Dutch

accent, was under five feet, bowlegged and cross-eyed. In female dress he looked worse, but they shoved him on and

Booth began Richard's speech:

Divine perfection of a woman.

Anderson and the other actors were hopping with laughter Booth was in a cold sweat. The dialogue seemed just offstage. endless, though it had been cut to the bone. The Lady Anne's curled in rehearsed scorn; she had two front teeth missing. lip Booth stuck grimly to the text:
Oh, teach not thy
soft lip such cold contempt.

In spite of everything the audience of natives squatting on the floor seemed well satisfied, and when it was time for the coronation scene and Booth asked King Kamehameha if they might borrow his armchair, which was the throne, His Majesty graciously got up and watched standing. At the end he shoulder and told him in British English that patted Booth's
as

a boy he had seen Booth's magnificent father play Richard

III

in

New York.

IV
The Booth family was like a frothing pot:
to hold the lid

down,

it

try as you would boiled over somewhere. While Edwin

was

in the antipodes, Junius

it

now

was

had been home to Maryland, for wife Clementine who was threatening a Junius'
divorce.

scandal

by suing for

Harriet, and this time also their little girl Marion, born in San Francisco, Junius made the tedious trip east and walked in unannounced on his mother at the farm. He managed the divorce discreetly and was back in California a month before Edwin, who landed in San Francisco in April, 1 855, with

With

about ten dollars in his pocket. Through the account Junius brought west with him, Booth,

newly landed, caught a glimpse of home; of his widowed mother coping valiantly and inadequately with the farm and

J2

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

servants; of Asia, beautiful at eighteen and being courted by Sleepy Clarke; of handsome, idling, unruly Johnny, who

thrashed his schoolmates and got drunk at sixteen. He was worried about Johnny, Junius told Edwin; their mother spoiled

him.

With ten dollars to his name there was not a chance that Booth could go home yet. He was lucky enough to find another engagement at the Metropolitan, still managed by Mrs.
Sinclair.

During

his travels his face

had hardened a

little,

he had

gained in self-assurance.

"He looked unusual and unique without trying to," explained Henry Sedley, who had known him as a boy in the East and was with him now in California.

Booth still wore his slouch hat and Hessians, but instead of the red shirt and scrape he had toned down his dress to a plain dark suit and an overcoat thrown around his shoulders capestyle.
. .
.

He flavored his talk with Spanish

to

muchas gracias, senor

recalled Sedley.

hastaluego.

"He was exposed

went to the

much temptation,"

He

races, smoked, and drank more than was good for but in California in the iSjo's "to keep fairly clear of him, evil habits, which Edwin in the main did, was correspondingly

praiseworthy."
almost snared in a ruinous marriage by a twice his age, and was rescued by a friend, probably Anderson. He vowed a solemn vow never to marry an ac-

Once he was

woman
tress.

Catherine Sinclair had lost so much money that she had to give up the Metropolitan. Booth found himself a billet in Sacramento. friend saw him lolling on the hotel porch there,

this

up on Hamlet. Queen Gertrude for was played by Mrs. Judah, a West Coast performance favorite, originally of the Boston Museum. She had been the Duchess of York in Richard III on the night Booth made his
script in hand, brushing

debut

as Tressel.

Booth's style had strengthened. "If he will but apply himself!" This was the refrain of most reviews. "If he will but

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

73

and perseveringly in apply himself industriously, unceasingly his profession, he will ere long rank among the foremost of

He would have paid with his wild evening if his caul hadn't done its work again. life for one The human instrument of his rescue was another actor, who him dead drunk out of the Sacramento River and dosed pulled him with brandy. "Who wo' me up?" Booth snarled. splendid new theater, the Forrest, opened in Sacramento, and Booth, Caroline Chapman, George Spear, and Mrs. Judah were all signed on. Booth's engagement lasted about a month; he was fired for drinking the legend later given out by Asia in her books about the family was that the manager wished
But Booth was drinking hard.

living actors."

to "curtail expenses."

Mrs. Sinclair journeyed upriver to have another try management. She rented the small, dingy Sacramento Theater on a back street and re-engaged Booth. The Democratic State Journal reviewed a performance of his Richard III in which he forgot his lines not once but repeatedly: "It was palpable that the part had not been studied with the deep concern which an actor of so much promise as Mr. Booth owes not only to an audience but also to himself."
at

Then

They

did a

new melodrama, The Marble

Heart, which

told the story of Raphael Duchatlet, a sculptor in Paris hopeMademoiselle Marco whose heart is hard lessly in love with
as any stone. Booth and Henry Sedley flipped for parts and Booth was stuck with Raphael. He loathed playing lovers. All through the rehearsals he drove the cast crazy with his tricks. On opening night McQoskey met him leaving his dressing room for his first big scene, after having walked through the earlier ones. Booth wore a short black velvet paletot and a red silk handkerchief around his throat. "Want to see some good acting?" he asked.

"I haven't seen

"You'll see
infinitesimal
tor's studio.

it yet," said McCloskey dryly. now. Keep your eye on me." He gave his wink, then glided out on the stage, set as a sculpit

74

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Music. RAPHAEL

is- discovered seated, left, with his head on his hand before a statue, at which he has been resting working; MADAME DUCHATLET is seated in the great chair, right, looking anxiously at RAPHAEL.

RAPHAEL. (To himself, with

passion.) O, Marco, Marco! Like the fabled basilisk, death is in thine eyes. The wind is less inconstant than the rays of those beauteous lights of heaven's the next they freeze, masterpiece one instant they burn, elate with hope and madden with despair. O, enchanting

Siren!

Where

is

MADAME DUCHATLET. ( Who has risen and quietly

him, leaning on his shoulder.) Raphael, Raphael,
is it

thy heart?

where

is

thy heart?
approached
grief.

have no secrets from your mother tell Raphael? my heart is cold with

me your
fear!

my dear son!
What
weeping

(Falls

into his arms.)

RAPH. Dear mother, compose yourself; my tranquility shall soon return for your sake I will chase from my heart the maddening chimeras that have estranged me from thee till
then, let

me

guard

my

secret.

Madame

Duchatlet leaves. Raphael throws

away

his chisels

and paces the stage in frantic excitement. RAPH. I can work no more! ( With passion.) O Marco! Marco! thine image is graven there, I cannot tear thee from my heart
never to be effaced! (Taking a miniature from
reason, I love thee Spite of marble heart marble heart!
kissing
it.)

his breast

and

my

beautiful statue

The tears poured down Booth's cheeks. Long before this the
whole audience had begun to sob, men as well as women. There were trumpetings from the wings as the hard-boiled actors blew out their emotions into their silk handkerchiefs. "I suppose very few know," declared McCloskey, speaking for the newspapers years later when the California he remembered was a place as remote and diminished as though he were at it through the wrong end of a spyglass "I suppose looking few know that Booth was a grand melodramatic, rovery
mantic actor of the Fr6d6ric Lemattre style, and those who knew him in the early days are not so sure that it was not a

SEEING THE ELEPH'ANT

75

mistake for him to follow the great tragedian roles rather than those of the romantic, picturesque school." Next Booth was given the dual part of Fabian and Louis dei Franchi, the swashbuckling twins of The Corsican Brothers. Boozy George Spear Old Spudge was in the cast and so

was McCloskey, and on opening night, which was New Year's Eve, McCloskey and Old Spudge stumbled onstage, hilariously drunk, and beat each other with a live chicken. Booth

managed to keep sober this evening, but of another showing of the same play a few nights later the Journal observed that "Mr. Booth, who was cast to sustain the principal character,
could hardly sustain himself, but he struggled through it, dragging everything down to the depths of disgust. Speaking mildly, he was intoxicated." One of the managers in Sacramento was a certain loudmouthed Ben Baker "Uncle Ben" the actors called him who eventually was fond of boasting that he "had picked Edwin Booth out of the quartz in California!" Baker announced he was soon going east and offered, if Ted liked, to "fix up" some appearances for him. Anderson sec-

onded the idea and advised Booth to engage Uncle Ben as his advance agent for his eastern debut. Baker departed, talking steadily, and Booth, to earn some money in the meantime, joined a troupe of strollers and began another tour of the camps. Manager of this troupe was burly Ben Moulton, a coach driver by profession. The leading
lady was his wife. Early in July they started out with Booth prancing gaily ahead on a pinto pony he had bought for the trip and the others bumping after in a covered wagon that held ten actors, an orchestra of three horn players, scenery and costumes, and was plastered over with posters advertising THE IRON CHEST, OR THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER. On the back platform sat Booth's dress basket, which was to be used for the chest in the play. It was covered with canvas painted to look like iron and decorated with a skull and crossbones. In Hangtown and Jackass Gulch near Shirttail Bend in the

j6

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

northern mining region Booth was loudly invited to "git" by the unpredictable miners as he gulped through the woes of Sir Edward Mortimer. Traveling south, heralding their entry into each new town by a parade down the main street with all three horns blowing, Moulton's strollers forded the Mokelumne River. Booth crossed on his pony and was almost sucked few days later in the town of Columbia under by quicksand. a fight broke out in the audience while he was onstage. Shots were fired toward the footlights; no actors were hurt but two miners were killed, and in both these near fatalities it was his caul that had saved him, Booth claimed. By an uncanny coincidence one settlement after another began to burn to the ground immediately after the troupe then Diamond pulled out of it: Hangtown, Georgetown, The cavalcade trundled into Nevada City. Before the Springs. calico curtain had a chance to rise this town also towered into flame; the best efforts of the local bucket brigade, augmented by the actors, were perfectly useless. Then Grass Valley blazed up. Some of the miners, suspecting a firebug, looked dangerously at Booth. They were beginning to call him the Fiery Star in ugly parody of the Fairy Stars, child entertainers like little Lotta Crabtree who toured the camps, singing and

dancing.

Moulton's company had left a trail of bad debts as well, and in Downieville the sheriff caught up with it. Ben Moulton lit out. All the costumes, the three horns, and Booth's pinto pony were confiscated. Booth slung his flannel sleeping blanket over
his shoulder,

dug

his

hands in

his

pockets and slogged back to

Marysville on Snank's pony.

"Booth's bad luck" was becoming proverbial. In Sacramento, dead broke again, he met an architect named M. F. Butler who was a patron of the theater. Butler spoke earnestly to the floundering young actor and the gist of what he said was: "My boy, you've seen the elephant' over and over. Now go back
East.

Take your father's place while his memory's Yes, agreed Booth, that was his own idea; but

still

how

green." to get

SEEING THE ELEPHANT

there?

77

Leave that to him, said Butler. And he lined up a benefit Booth at the Forrest Theater. Booth pkyed the Cardinal in Richelieu by Bulwer Lytton, and after the show the stampedhim a present over and above the receipts, ing audience gave a pin of California gold shaped like a hand with a diamond between thumb and forefinger. But when Booth had paid off his debts he hadn't a sou left. "Trust me!" said Butler and arranged a second benefit. Booth did lago this time, and his present was a handsome copy of
for

Shakespeare's plays.

Next morning he boarded the steamer for San Francisco. Every actor in Sacramento was waving from the river wharf and calling "God speed." The captain led him to the rail, as
for a curtain call. The theater band blared, and nothing was wanting to make all joyful but M. F. Buder with last night's
if

Booth's eye was glazed, his mind busy with bleak when, just as the gangplank was to be hauled up, a frantic voice shouted, "Stop! Stop! Hold the ship!" and Butthe landing place clutching the bag of gold, ler pounded down which he had simply forgotten to turn over to Booth. At the Metropolitan in San Francisco Booth took a third
receipts.

calculations

King Lear for the first time. At his final call he whipped off his white wig and beard and astonished the audience with his boyish face, just as his father had once surmother. prised his San Francisco had a last look at Booth's face two days later on September 5, 1856, as he stood at the rail of the steamer Golden Age, about to raise anchor off Long Wharf. It was
benefit, acting

not a particularly strong face. was its expression. The chin missed being cynical.

The strolling actor's

lifted;

life

was

in

the curl of the

.lips just

Booth was bound for Panama and from there east across the Isthmus, not on muleback this time, but by the new railroad; from there north to the farm in Maryland; from there, after a breathing space, out into the world again to bid for
fame before eastern audiences.

As he leaned over the

the ship's rail, searching

crowd on the

78

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
his friends, he felt that he was leaving rather than returning to it. And when much laterfame achieved he thought of California, he for-

wharf for Junius and

home

trapped by got the hardships, the jouncing disillusionments, and remembered only that it had been the golden land where for four swift years, with no hand to hold him back, he had been young, unjaded, spurred by the hope of fame, and perfectly happy.

CHAPTER

A New
The

Star Rises

royal tree hath left us royal fruit. King Richard III, Act ///, scene 7

of gold, or of skulls "like actors carry around with 'em." It was a forlorn household Booth came back to. He had always thought of his father as a rich man, so had everyone. Yet after Mr. Booth's debts were paid, all that was left was a few hundred dollars. Mrs. Booth had rented the Baltimore house and retired with the children to the farm, where she toiled to make it do well, but she had the amateur touch. Her farming was what her neighbors called "ornamentajL" The Booth crops failed, the Booth stock died of mysterious diseases. Mr. Booth's discipline still lay heavy on his family. Asia and John couldn't bring themselves to kill their own animals and at last had set traps outside the grounds for some wild creature. All they had caught was one frantic opossum that looked up at them so pleadingly they almost shed tears and immediately let it go. Their cows ran dry except for one that gave only "pink milk," moving Johnny to declaim dramatically:
79

The trunk was so heavy it must be full

cried the country boys as they lugged Booth's trunk into the farmhouse.
diggin's!

"HE'S FROM the

"

8o

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
There is an old tale goes, that Herne the Hunter Doth all the winter time at still midnight Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns And makes milch-kine yield blood.
.
. .

had been halfway built when grandiosely Tudor Hall, which Mr. Booth left. The original cabin, long outgrown, was given
over to the Negroes. Edwin's mother was much aged since he had seen her last. From a sulky schoolgirl Asia had grown into a handsome young woman, still reserved and passionate, capable of spasms of the wild Booth gaiety. It was John Wilkes who had changed most. At eighteen he was taller and bigger than Edwin, wontheatrical way. His dark derfully good-looking in an exotic, as snake's eyes under crescenteyes glowed, fascinating flashed in an actor's shaped lids and silky lashes. His teeth "I must have fame! smile. He was devouringly ambitious

They were

all

living in a

new

brick farmhouse, called

fame!"

At school he used to

tell his friends, as

they lay on the grass

was die name that smoking would be remembered; and as he contemplated the impossible feats he might have performed if they hadn't been impossible (such as overthrowing the Colossus of Rhodes) his whole soul seemed to inflate itselfwith satisfaction. Violently stage-struck, he had made his debut in Baltimore as Richmond in Richard III in a benefit for Sleepy Qarke, who had gone on the stage too and was starring in Toadies, the comic afterpiece. It was premature, and John did badly. What Clarke was really after when he rushed Johnny into appearing, declared Mrs. Booth, was the family name. Earlier, when he was at school, a gypsy in the near-by wood of Cockeysville had read John's palm. "Ah-h!" she muttered, "You've a bad hand, the Lines all cris-cras! It's full enough of sorrow full of trouble trouble in plenty. You'll break hearts, they'll be nothing to you. You'll die young, and leave many to mourn you. You'll make a bad end, and have plenty to love
that his clay pipes a yard long,
,

you. You'll have a fast life short, but a grand one. Young sir, I've never seen a worse hand, and I wish I hadn't seen it, but

A
if I

NEW STAR

RISES

8l

were a girl Fd follow you through the world for your handsome face." Junius and Edwin, as the eldest sons, had sent money home whenever they could. Yet they had stayed away so long, it had come to be Johnny who ranked first in the house. Now their mother cautioned Edwin never to scold Johnny nor even to hint at any correction. She wanted no unpleasantness between her sons; she had told Junius the same when he was at home. And when Edwin, ready for the eastern debut on which his future hinged, looked over his father's costumes, which he had handled so often, and chose several to wear, his mother said to him firmly, "No," that she was saving those
for John.
"Star or starve!"

Booth had boasted as much to Henry Sedley before he started east, and when a reporter in Sacramento asked him what his plans were he had answered with a vague and shining look:
"Perhaps Europe!" He meant, however, to conquer the New World first: the important cities on the eastern seaboard, New York, Boston, and
Philadelphia. But when Uncle Ben Baker, arriving ahead, tried to make engagements for him, he was given the cold shoulder.

Eastern managers didn't care to risk starring a youngster whom

they remembered as performing very palely; the best theater Baker could elbow into was the Front Street in Booth's home city of Baltimore, where Booth opened on October 15 beginning with Hamlet, then going on to Richelieu and Richard IIL He had a tendency to rant and strike attitudes, yet certain tones of his father's voice sounded in his own and told on the Baltimore audience with thrilling effect. He headed south, with Uncle Ben as his seedy impresario. By mid-November they were in Richmond, playing at a theater stage-managed by Joe Jefferson. Booth, who had been sixteen when Jefferson first met him, had turned twenty-three on November 13. "There was a gentleness and sweetness of manner in him that made him far more winning than his father," was Jefferson's impression now.

82

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

After he had seen Booth act Richard that night, Jefferson his little leading lady to one side and told her: "Tomorrow, Mary, you'll rehearse Juliet to the Romeo of a new and

drew

rising tragedian.''

Next morning

the

two young

players in street clothes took

their places for rehearsal.

sixteen, hardly Mary older than Juliet. She was slight, not beautiful, and yet as her part gained on her, her serious and eager face began to glow with a lovely intelligence better than beauty. Booth, who looked a perfect Romeo, was somehow never convincing in the character, didn't come to life until his fight with Tybalt.

Devlin was

But he was young, he was handsome, and perhaps Mary Devlin saw through the trumped-up gallantry of his Romeo to the sensitive Hamlet behind it. Hamlet has his own charm for women. The interested company watched a spark kindle between the two. After the performance, while Mary was sighing to Jefferson that Mr. Booth was the greatest actor she had ever known, that she was "inspired" and could "act forever" with him, Booth was writing home to his mother: "I have seen and acted with a young woman who has so impressed me that I could
almost forget my vow never to marry an actress." Mary Devlin had gone on the stage at fourteen because her

to the care of Jefferson and his wife, with whom she lived. When Jefferson saw a member of the notorious Booth family

father, in business in Troy, York, had lost his money. It career for a "nice girl" from a nontheatrical background, and the manager Henry Jarrett had entrusted her

New

was a dubious

showing signs of interest in the inexperienced girl, he disapproved and ordered Mary to return the turquoise bracelet Booth had given her. Then Booth craftily bought another bracelet, the twin of Mary's and presented it to Mrs. Jefferson. This smoothed the path. At the end of the week Booth led his Juliet into the greenroom, where in a sham-heroic manner as though acting a scene in the play the pair fell on their knees before Jefferson and murmured: "Father, your blessing." Jefferson caught his cue, held out his hands over their heads

A
children."

NEW STAR

RISES

83

and answered in the voice of Friar Lawrence: "Bless you,

my

But once

bitten,

twice shy: Booth had almost been trapped

into marriage in California. His obsession against marrying a woman of die theater was slow to overcome, and he began to

have scruples whether after all he ought to break his vow. When he and Mary said good-by nothing had been fixed between them.
II

road it was Uncle Ben who mended and cared for wardrobe, sitting up long after midnight in their successive hotel rooms stitching and patching while Booth lay back smoking and threading the needles. From Mobile Booth wrote to Dave Anderson on the back of his hotel washing list and after finishing his letter added some remarks on the printed

On the

his star's

side.

Don't weep

WASHING
Ifs
all

LIST own
of assetts

Mr. Booth's
o Night Shirts. o Bosoms. / Drawers. 2 Stockings. Chemise.
Caps.
Dresses.

list

oh

hum
he, he.

Night Dresses. Corsets. Ha,

law!

ha, ha! / confess the cape. Capes. De lord Pantalets.

Skirts.

jamais

Battle House, Mobile

1857

84

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

In Memphis Booth and Baker met Adah Menken, famous for her performance of Mazeppa in which, stripped nearly naked, she rode a white horse up a runway. The Menken conceived a "crush" on Booth, which he didn't return. In Louisville a little Negro boy trotted backstage carrying a covered basket. Booth asked: "What's in that?"
off the white cloth, In the basket was a skull wrapped in newspapers, the parts joined by springs and hooks. It had once belonged to a horse thief named Lovett whom Mr. Booth had befriended. Lovett had been hanged in Louisville and had willed Mr. Booth his skull to use in Hamlet. The doctor who prepared it now sent it over to Edwin, who stuck it up on a sheff in his dressing room, wearing Macbeth's red wig and a and gilt crown. large jeweled Chicago Booth played at McVicker's Theater. The lively,

The boy said: "Dunno, sah." "Take the cloth oif." The boy swept
fled, screeching.

then

small stepdaughter of the theater owner, a little girl called Mary McVicker, took an imperious fancy to him, quite on the order of the mature Menken's.

As they worked back east it seemed that the billing Baker used to advertise his star got more and more flamboyant and preposterous. Booth violently disliked such titles as

THE WORLD'S GREATEST ACTOR

THE

INHERITOR OF His FATHER'S GENIUS

and in Detroit he struck and sent word to Garry Hough, the theater manager, that he "insisted on being announced as simple

Edwin Booth, nothing more."

Hough obeyed and proclaimed the ENGAGEMENT FOR ONE WEEK ONLY
OF SIMPLE

EDWIN BOOTH
Someone had once called Boston "the Athens of America," and ever since then a patter of applause from the critical Bostonians was supposed to confer intense prestige, though, actu-

ANEWSTARRISES
ally,

85

old

the records of Boston box offices proved that what the town really enjoyed, her lofty pretensions to the contrary,

was not highfalutin classics but pantomime and spectacle, "blue

flame and glitter."
set his heart on playing in Boston, and after resnubs from managers, Baker finally wedged him into peated diminutive notice in the Boston the spring season of 1857.

Booth had

Daily Evening Transcript made known the starring engagement of Mr. Edwin Booth at the Boston Theater on Washington Street.
This Evening, April 20, 1857 Will be performed the play entitled

A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS

Sir Giles

Overreach

MR. EDWIN BOOTH

was cold and rainy. Bad weather didn't keep a flocking to the cozy little Boston Museum to see the popular Eliza Logan in the new melodrama of The Duchess, or The Unnatural Father. But young tragedians in the old plays were a dime a dozen. At the Boston Theater, a big barn of a place where all delicate effects had to be enlarged ("Might as well act on the Boston Common," troupers passed the word
night

The

crowd from

to one another), the audience was thin and made up mainly of white-haired playgoers who had known Booth's father. Cor-

Booth on his entrance. This was his meed But after this gesture the Bostonians settled back in their seats and their polite attenriveness said plainly: "Now, young man, let's see what you can do for yourself." Booth had chosen to open in this play because the first three acts, which were relatively tame, would allow him time
dial clapping greeted

as his father's son.

to feel out his audience. Sir Giles Overreach, the principal is a malevolent old scoundrel who has grown rich robfigure, widows and orphans. In the last scene Sir Giles does bing dramatically overreach himself; his wicked plans are thwarted;

he collapses into raving madness. This was the scene Booth was counting on. He paused in the wing to collect himself, then strode out on the stage as if

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it

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

his father had done in a countrybelonged to him, and just as theater in Virginia almost forty years before, unleashed his His eyes dilated and swept powers on the startled audience.

the stage

"like bassilisks,"

wrote one

critic

next morning.

father's eyes!" thought many people, and so they were in their remarkable way of emitting light, though like his

"His

mother's in their

size and brown-blackness. But the next moment everyone forgot comparisons. A fearful sight fascinated them: they watched the mind and body of a man disintegrate.

whitened and shrank; his lower jaw sagged like a dying man's; his upper lip writhed back baring his teeth in a lunatic grin. His hand flew to the hilt of his sword but his arm failed in its office. His guilty past rushed over him:
Sir Giles' face

Ha!

am
sits

feeble:

Some undone widow

upon mine arm.

At this point Junius Brutus Booth as Sir Giles used to bite a piece of carmine-soaked sponge hidden in his mouth, which made a red froth bubble on his lips. Edwin Booth disdained this thrilled in a horrible spasm particular trick. But as his body and pitched face forward to the floor, the whole length of it seeming to hit the stage at once, and there continuing to twitch and quiver, so strong a sense of evil poured out of it that half the people in the house turned away their eyes, feeling sick and shaken. "Quite a triumph," ventured the cautious Boston Transcript. "Young Booth's success was decided. . . It brought back the most vivid recollections of the fire, the vigor, the strong intellectuality which characterized the acting of his lamented fa.

ther."

The next night Booth

did Richelieu. Dr. Samuel

Howe was

in the audience with his wife, Julia

both ardent As soon as the new star began to speak, Mrs. theatergoers. Howe and her husband felt a peculiar chill go all through them. They looked at each other, nodded and whispered: "This is the real thing!" For his benefit Booth gave Maturin's play Bertram and also

Ward Howe,

ANEWSTARRISES

87

middle-aged him "Papa." At the final curtain, when the boyish widower, Mr. Jones Robinson Brownsmith, is on the point of marrying a girl whose father is about to marry Little Toddlekins, Booth as Brownsmith, wearing a high hat and white trousers, tripped downstage to the footlights and appealed to the audience to unscramble the relationships.

orted himself in the afterpiece, a farce called Little Toddlekins about a young widower stuck with a great lump of a stepdaughter "Little Toddlekins" who calls

BROWNSMITH. It's only some little boy fresh from school can do it. Is there any little boy here can help us? It's a nice first wife's husband's eldest little sum. daughter's mother will now be my second wife's father's daughter-in-law's aunt;

My

consequently,

my

present wife's youngest daughter's grand-

mother will be her father-in-law's second wife's mother-inlaw's husband. No I can't do it. Is there any young gentle-

man

here,

home

for the holidays,

who

will undertake it?

"As a farce actor Mr. Booth did not impress us favorably," was one critic's clammy verdict. "The tragic prestige of an actor should not be trifled with."

Edwin

Forrest sat out in front another night.

"Why

don't

the young man learn his lines?" he grumbled. In the house for a performance of Brutus was a plain-faced, stage-struck girl named Louisa May Alcott. Manager Barry of the Boston Theater had given her a pass to all performances.

"Saw young Booth in Brutus? wrote Louisa in her journal, "and liked him better than his father." During The Iron Chest the emotional actress Matilda Heron, in town for rehearsals of Caimlle, sat in a box and was so carried away that she peeled off her kid glove and ostentatiously threw it at Booth. Next morning a verse was in one of the
papers:

Miss H. threw her "kid" For a popular bid, She blundered, we fear, where the stage-yawning
If

Styx

is,

For

'twas plain to our eyes,

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
If a good judge of size, That by shop-keepers' measure she did not "throw sixes.

But

if

tribute it were,

Or professional spur, From an artiste in luck young Booth

abandon it; For 'twill tempt you to aim

don't

At a

still

And acknowledge
the hand in
It

higher feme, the heart for the lack of

it.

was

the critics, that passion, decided

was the governing

work was crude, but "crude," quality of Booth's acting. His writes Henry Clapp, a seasoned Boston reviewer, "with the promise-crammed crudity of youthful genius." He was most impressive in scenes of fierce action when,
towering though his passion was, he always seemed to hold something in reserve. The critics preferred him as Brutus and Richard, agreed that King Lear was much too much for him at present, and disagreed over his Hamlet, pitched in a lower key and distinctly more thoughtful and more of a person than the fairy-tale prince he had created in California. The reviewer for the Transcript thought it feeble, barely up to average, even though Booth certainly looked the part. Still in fairness the
Transcript printed the opinion of a correspondent "whose views differ somewhat from our own," and who could find

only one word in the language to describe Booth's Hamlet, and was "beautiful." "We have seen actors play the part with more energy, dash more at effects, but the beauty of
that
.

abstraction and intensity." Someone suggested to Julia Ward Howe that she write a play for Booth. She was interested, so he went to call on her. Mrs. Although he was so much the actor in his
its

Booth's Hamlet was

appearance, delighted with his natural gendemanliness, his "modest, intelligent and, above all, genuine" manner. The freshfaced Boston lady and the rather Hebraic-looking young man talked together quietly while in the adjoining conservatory the

Howe was

ANEWSTARRISES
ferns rustled as the small

89
door.

Howe girls peeped around the

One name slipped out of Booth again and again, Mary Devlin, who has been much admired," he
"in several heavy parts." nestly,

that of "little

repeated ear-

The Boston Theater had made scarcely any money on Booth,

critical success with the reserved Bostonians had done yet his him personally great good. Manager Barry, though, was worried half-sick by his star's dissipation, and William Warren from the Boston Museum, who was a cousin of Jefferson's, took Booth aside. Warren had played the Lord Mayor in Richard HI on the epochal night when Booth played Tressel. "Now, Ted,"

he said sharply, there is for you in a stage career either a fortune and the lead or a bottle of brandy. You must cast aside Bohemianism. Be Hamlet everywhere." Booth listened and did otherwise. "He used to pace Washington Street with a springy, elastic step," remembered one of his
friends. "He wore striking suits, cultivated long, curly hair and smoked huge cigars. Chain-lightning couldn't hold him in those

days!"
If Boston were the Athens of America,

New York was Rome.

All roads led there. After Booth's fine Boston notices Baker had York contract with William Burno trouble getting him a ton, manager of the Metropolitan Theater, where the French

New

\ragedienne Rachel had appeared in 1855. Booth had asked to York as Sir Giles and to be billed modestly; there open in

New

must be no flaunting his father's name this above all. Burton, however, had other ideas. He had had a poor season. He needed a special attraction and he decided to handle Booth's best asset in the unblushing Roman manner. So he ordered posters to advertise that

EDWIN BOOTH
SON OF THE GKEAT TRAGEDIAN

He had Booth's best reviews published in booklet form and widely circulated. When it was too
his father's celebrated vehicle.

/ 4,

857, in Richard ///,

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

late for his star to

back out, he sent a telegram to Ben Baker IE Boston: "Mr. Booth announced for Richard III next Monday, Seats going like hot cakes." York train, After a farewell binge, Booth fell into the in the heart of New The Metropolitan was on lower Broadway York's theatrical district, and as he and Baker drove down the tree-lined street Booth saw himself emblazoned on the

New

pleasant

sides of buildings

and in shopwindows.

SON OF THE GREAT TRAGEDIAN HOPE OF THE LIVING DRAMA RICHARD'S HIMSELF AGAIN

He groaned, clutched his forehead, ground his teeth, and shrieked to Baker: "I'm ruined!" He went to rehearsal to meet a company as sore as he was, The veterans in it didn't relish giving their support to a comto swing into easy fame on his father's parative beginner about coattaik There was another beginner in the cast, Lawrence Barrett, who was down for Tressel. hungry-looking youngster, all eyes and forehead, Barrett had achieved this, has first, season in New York only after making many weary rounds, and along with the rest of the company he was ready to hate Edwin Booth. But when Booth glided down the aisle and up onstage, all hostility melted. Instead of the pert aspirant the others expected, they saw a "slight, so Barrett depale youth," scribes him, "with black, flowing hair and soft brown eyes. He took his place with no air of conquest or self-assertion, and gave his directions with a grace and courtesy which have never left him." Barrett was writing years kter when he knew Booth

well.

Thanks to Burton's advertising the house was full this night Booth's performance of Richard, said the critics next morning (to Booth's chagrin, though he expected it) was marvelously like his father's. Through certain scenes young Booth walked as his father had done when the mood failed him. Yet tamely when Edwin Booth, like his father in this, too, took up a scene to make a sensation of it, "all his tameness instantly vanishes,'
3

NEW STAR

RISES

91

York Tribune. "He renders the passage with cheered the a vigorous truthfulness which startles his audience into wild enthusiasm/' When he came to the terrific speech
The North? What do they
i'

New

the

North

When
his face

they should serve their sovereign IN THE WEST?

like a lion's roar;

and body blazed with expression; his raging voice was he communicated an electrical force. All over

the house

men surged to

their feet as if literally

yanked up by

the contagion of his

summons and shouted

in pure delight:

"Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!" Tremendous untrained power and unfocused energy, an interior nervousness that showed in his acting: these were some of the flaws, possible seeds of greatness, that the critics pointed out. Booth hadn't yet learned control of his voice. His walk was rather awkward, like a very young man's. But it was the influence of his father that stood mainly in his way. From being so much with his father he had unconsciously acquired all Junius Brutus Booth's bad mannerisms; he had deliberately worked to
imitate the
inferior.

good things.

He was miserably aware the result was

In Richard ///, for example, Mr. Booth used to say:

"Off with
at the same
his

head!"

time striking one hand into the other; and his gesture amazingly conjured up the picture of the headman's block and the kneeling victim. But when Edwin Booth did the same, nothing happened. New York reviewers compared father and son monotonously until Booth, irritated and challenged, began to scrutinize his acting, and to pounce on and root out everything
imitative.

There were two critics who looked at Booth freshly, being both young themselves. William Winter, a sporadic reviewer (later the dramatic oracle of the Tribune under Greeley ) , predicted that
roles his
if Booth would only reflect more when studying his name soon would "eclipse any which has adorned the

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
"

English stage within the memory of living man! Winter's own memory was short; he was twenty-one. Adam Badeau, another free lance, was a little older. Badeau

had been loitering down Broadway one spring evening looking for copy when on an impulse he swung into the Metropolitan, cynically ready to be let down after William Burton's boasts " ("Hope of the living drama! "Richard's himself again! ") But
.

instead he had been lifted up. His steel-rimmed spectacles grew cloudy with his excitement. When the show was over he took

himself backstage, where his obviously sincere praise overjoyed and touched Booth.

son, Irving, all the great ones. He peered over their shoulders into their lives, talked and wrote familiarly about them, made

Both Winter and Badeau came to know Edwin Booth well. Winter knew personally most of the actors of his day Jeffer-

himself the gusty chorus in the drama of their careers. As for Badeau, he soon began to spend whole days with Booth, and immediately taking in that die howling lack in Booth's equipment was his want of scholarship, he located books and pictures about the theater and thrust them on the raw star.

young

and art galleries together. Badeau reminded Booth how Kean had practiced his gestures before a full-length glass; how Garrick had deepened his sense of life by keeping his eyes open in the criminal courts, the madhouse. But at night in Booth's dressing room the actor took over and the journalist leaned forward enthralled to watch the character for the evening come into existence. On hot nights Booth sat

They

visited libraries

stripped to the waist, offering his face to the mirror. As the aging lines were penciled around the actor's mouth, the stylized crow's feet etched, the thin lips emphasized, as the rouge and false eyebrows went on and at last the wig, tunic, and

Badeau saw Hamlet or lago or Pescara gradually emerge. Once he accidentally pulled Booth's scarlet robe as the actor
apart

tights,

sat smoking, ready for Richelieu, dare quavered in falsetto:

and Booth shrieked and

"How

he was the Cardinal

you, sir?"

The

next instant

He

again.

had plenty of humor, not particularly sweet, and while

ANEWSTARRISES

93

he made up he chattered without stopping, exploding ghastly But as they grew intimate Badeau saw him sometimes puns. when all his gaiety had dropped away and he sat slumped before his dressing table staring straight ahead with the expresgazes into the lowest circle of the inferno. Through this depression there was no getting at him. "It was to witness," writes Badeau, who used to find such appalling melancholy hard to understand in a man with everything to live for, even though Booth tried harrowingly to describe it: the restlessness, sense of drifting and premonition of
sion of a

man who

some horror lurking in ambush "the feeling that evil is hanging over me, that I can't come to good." He longed for Badeau to share all his thoughts. He began to lean on Badeau. In their separations he scratched him quick little "Dear Ad, I am sick took physic last night to make appeals: me sleep & laid awake all night; my cough is worse and my " dble! I am tired & in a bad humor! hoarseness d When he went carousing it was with other actors. He often an actor about his own age. got drunk with James Seymour,

joylessness,

They would
far

roll

home

in the small hours to Seymour's house

downtown, where tiny Willie Seymour lay sleeping in his crib. The father would snatch the baby up, cry, "Here, Ned, catch!" and toss Willie across to Booth who tossed him back. Early in the summer Booth left for the road and was gone a long time, turning up again in New York at intervals. The
as

Badeau sometimes stopped for weeks. not you're on a spree," Badeau jogged him gently. "Likely "It's nearly five months since one of your performances of this sort and since I've known you, you've never missed one in that space of time. You might have waited until I could care
trickle of his letters to

for you."

m
When the old actresses in the stock companies Boodi visited
praised his performance,

and say

softly:

he would smile and arch his brows "That was because I acted for you!"

On

the whole, he liked old

women

better than the

young

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
whom

dainty monograms "Though you do not know me, dear Mr. Booth, I have admired you so long and so warmly I can scarcely feel myself to be quite a stranger to you." Booth hardly ever read these notes through. Sometimes he back or scribbled his name as if idly pracjotted lists on the his sought-after, seldom-given autograph. In Boston,
ticing

sent him poems, flowers, Roman scarves, ones, dozens of ostrich and peacock feathers, expensive rings and brooches to wear onstage, as well as perfumed notes on tinted paper with

where he was staying with Orlando Tompkras, part-owner of lett a diamond ring for the Boston Theater, an anonymous girl him at Tompkins' house at 1 2 Frankfin Square, and Booth hung the family cat, then dumped it on a string around the neck of the cat on a cushion in the front window. "More than once," writes Adam Badeau, who absorbed whatever went on with a newspaperman's sense that all's grist, "Booth saved some foolish child from what might have been disgrace, and sent her home
to her .family.
life."

And

he never injured a pure

"little

woman
Mary

in his

In March, 1858, he acted again with

Devlin."

They met in Baltimore, where Mary was playing at the Holliday Street Theater and living in a boardinghouse to which Booth saw her home every night. He had separated from Uncle Ben Baker and was doing excellently on his own. This summer, after Mary had played her first New York engagement at Niblo's Garden in Charlotte Cushman's company, Booth
took a benefit at the Holliday Street Theater as Richard with his brother John Wilkes playing Richmond.
III,

For every woman

who

ran after

Edwin Booth

there

were

John's elegant figure in its stylish accouterments * claret-colored coat with velvet lapels, a pale buff waistcoat and dove-gray trousers strapped down under the boots, a wide-brimmed tropical-straw hat. Restaurant waitresses swarmed to serve John. Hotel maids tore his bed apart for the ecstasy of making it up again. Like his father, John,

two running after

who was twenty,

real trouble, though

had had several dose shaves from getting in it was said of him, as Badeau said of Edwin,

ANEWSTARRISES
that he never seduced a girl

95

he knew was pure. Clara Morris, method at work when Mrs. Ellsler, young a manager's wife who was far from young, shook her finger at him for some forward remark, and John seized her hand, made a sweeping bow and kissed her fingers gallantly. Yet appearing on the same stage with Edwin, John went
a
actress,

saw

his

mortifyingly unnoticed, though his brother did his best to give him the advantage and hide his mistakes, having noticed at rehearsal that John bucked corrections. In October in Richmond John played Horatio to Edwin's Hamlet, and when Ed-

came he pulled his brother down to the footand suggested to the audience: "I think he's done well, lights don't you?" Privately he wrote to Junius: "I don't think John will startle the world * . . but he is improving fast and looks beautiful."
win's final call

The end of October found Booth at the Boston Theater, where Mary Devlin was now playing. Again they acted opeach other in Romeo and Juliet. The performance posite seemed remarkably real. "Few who saw it will ever forget it," exclaimed Julia Ward Howe. "The two true lovers were at their best, ideally young, beautiful, and identified with their
parts."

Mary Devlin also pkyed Margaret, daughter of Sir Giles Overreach, to Booth's rapacious Sir Giles. The entire family of theater-going Howes in a row at the matinee saw them act together in The Iron Chest. This creaky old melodrama was usually reserved for Saturday afternoons, and it struck the intellectual Howes as pretty silly stuff, which only Booth's persaved from being ridiculous. As Sir Edward Mortisonality his first gloomy chords summoning from offstage, "Adam, mer,

Adam Winterton, come hither to me," were hauntingly thrilling and set the tone for the whole. But the Howes were not moved

by

the pathetic climax in

which Mary, playing Helen, Sir Edward's ladylove charming in a white satin dress trimmed with point lace and silver, white silk stockings, white satin shoes, and a white velvet hat

96

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

with ostrich plumes threw herself into the black velvet arms of Booth, as the dying Sir Edward.

HELEN* Where is he? Ill, and on the ground! Oh! Mortimer! Oh, Heaven! My Mortimer! Oh, raise him gently!
Speak to me, love.

He cannot! SIR EDWARD. Helen 'twas I that killed (He struggles to speak, but, unable to utter, he falls and dies. Helen kneels over him as the curtain slowly descends.)

Julia

Ward Howe soon met

little

exquisite

woman,"
as

as she called

and became very fond of "this Mary, who was as much

this

of a natural lady

Booth a gentleman. During

engage-

ment Mrs.

Howe saw Booth as Hamlet and her poem about him

Monthly was a tribute and a portrait.
sit

printed in the Atlantic

We

before the

row of evening lamps,

Each

in his chair,
air.

Forgetful of November dusks and damps,

And

wintry

And,

beautiful as dreams of

maidenhood

That doubt

defy,
his

Young Hamlet, with

And

forehead grief-subdued,

visioning eye.

"My
ton

Hamlet,"

Mary
still

love than ever, and

called Booth. They were deeper in Booth's recoil from marrying an actress

when

a Boston lawyer

who had no such

squeamishness

proposed to Mary. She asked the advice of Charlotte Cushman. Miss Cushman, knowing the Booths, soberly advised her to accept the lawyer. Mary went so far as to write to Edwin that
she had had an offer, and Booth's reaction was to drown his hurt in such rivers of alcohol that he landed in bed, ill as well
as drunk, his acting at a standstill. Friends sent word to Mary, who caught the first train to join him. Between endearments

the lovers agreed to be married as soon as they could, and that

ANEWSTARRISES
Mary was to leave the stage
ruled.

97

not a fit place for his wife, Booth

Even in the first haze of her happiness Mary had an inkling what marriage to a Booth would be. To begin with, her future sister-in-law, the clannish Asia, was frighteningly hosof

Asia gave it out that Mary, being after the money Booth was making, had enticed him, drunk, into consenting to marry her. And when they were alone together, Booth told Mary
tile.

about himself, somberly and painfully* "I remember/' he wrote much later in a confession to a friend, "how she wept when I laid my blackened heart bare to her." He had kept nothing back; he had confessed everything. "Before I was eighteen I was a drunkard, at twenty a libertine. I knew no better. I was born good, I do believe, for there are of goodness constantly flashing out from among the sparks cinders ... I was neglected in my childhood and thrown now seems almost purposely) into all sorts of temp(really, it tations and evil society. ... I was allowed to roam at large, and at an early age and in a wild and almost barbarous country where boys become old men in vice." When they were apart Mary strove to distill herself into her letters so that she might go beside her lover to guide and she wrote, "I sat by the window thinkcomfort. "Last ni^ht," of you, and disturbed only by the mournful sighing of the ing wind. I wondered in 'this stillness of the world without, and of the soul within,' what our lives in the future would be." Booth, shuddering and overwrought, had confided to her how a wind moaning could bring back the past to him, take him years back and start him dreaming. It was of this she was thinking. "It is not wonderful that you should have such emotions sensitive natures are prone to them; then why, I ask myself, should my eyes have filled with tears, and trembled lest you should experience them again? Ah, dear Edwin 'twas a fear that they would lead you from my side and leave me once more alone. I am very wrong, doubtless, to have allowed so simple a fact to impress me, and am still more to blame to repeat it here; for have you not 'died into life,' as Keats says

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

and I should wean you from all remembrance of the tomb; and so I promise to do." What hundreds of young girls dreamed of, some idly, some was to be her destiny: to marry Edwin Booth. passionately, "You have ever seemed to me," she wrote, "like what Shelley men' 'companionless as says of himself 'a phantom among the last fading storm/ and yet my spirit ever seems lighter and more joyous when with you. This I can account for only by has been given to me to fulfil, and believing that a mission that I shall be rewarded by seeing you rise to be great and
happy."
of his work. She had seen him in in the 'Cardinal' charmed me. You must not forget to tell me of your studies; they interest me alike with the movements of your heart my heart; for 'tis mine. Did you not tell me so?"

Her

letters

were

full

Richelieu.

"The improvement you have made

She entered devotedly into his struggle to find his own style, one quieter than his father's. "The conversational, colloquial
school

you

desire to

adopt

is

the only true one, Edwin, for the

it,

present day."

Yet they both agreed an actor could go too far in Matilda Heron had done.
"

as

"Could you see her! expostulated little Mary, who had just done so. "She gives you too much of 'Mrs. John Smith/ and endeavors, or labors rather, to be so very commonplace that it
simply This pedantic naturalness that does not idealize, that does not elevate, that, like the Heron performance in Camlle, leaves out no detail of degrading reality this is not art in its highest embodiment. Mary deplored the pulpy, salacious vehicles, many of them French imports, that were crowding pure tragedy out of the theaters. "Is it not outrageous to see an art so holy as the drama thus desecrated? . . lWcan,if you will, change the perverted taste of the public by your truth and sublimity, and you must study for this. Dear Edwin, I will never allow that you to droop for a single moment; for I know the
.

is

ridiculous."

power

ANEWSTARRISES
dwells within
"If

99
to see

your eye, and

.

my

ambition

is

you

sur-

rounded by greatness.

my

love

is selfish,

you

will never be great: part of

this."

the world. I belongs to

mast remember

you

IV
Already Adam Badeau, who in the late 1850*5 was contributthe New York Sunday Times, under the pen name ing to "Vagabond," charming, short essays on topical subjects (Longfellow's poems, the pre-Raphaelites, the death of Charlotte Bronte), had hailed Booth in several of them as the only representative in his generation of pure, poetic tragedy, the "gor-

that Milton wrote of, whose essential element and whose peculiar accomplishment is to touch is the spiritual, the sod through the senses. "Edwin Booth," exclaimed Badeau,

geous tragedy"

"has

eyes

made me know what tragedy is. He has displayed to my an entirely new field; he has shown me the possibilities of

York together, Booth and Badeau argued for hours over the interpretation of Booth's roles. At the last minute possible they would separate at the dressing-room door, one bound
lights

tragedy." In

New

for the front of the house and the other for the wing. The dimmed, and with the portentous rise of the velvet cur-

tain would occur a nightly miracle, which the journalist worked

in vain to analyze. In their discussions

"How strange a thing it is, this genius! "

it

had been the

the actor's instinct.

Now

in performance

writer's learning versus how instinct tri-

umphed! "You may be talking all day with a man or woman, pernaps studying with them the very part they are to play at
night, quarrelling
tions,

over their readings,

criticising

their concep-

and then go and see them transformed, cry over the very line you thought they misapprehended, shudder at the gesture you declared would be ridiculous, and applaud as vigorously as anyone at the acting you contended against all day." Was this the friend whose impatient arguments in support of his performance had been laughably untenable this friend no

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

longer, but a superbeing

who burned with the divine fire? "This marvellous inspiration," cried Badeau, "that comes down on a man as suddenly and strangely and unaccountably to the
him before your or young Booth in Richelieu Rachel in Polyeucte in strangeness any other gift vouchsafed to the
that transfigures

actor as to the audience

face, like
this surpasses

race/'

Booth, who wouldn't be a bachelor much longer, took Badeau with him to the Maryland farm for a night's lark and a look around the old place. In 1859 there was no one living at the farm any more except a handful of Negroes left to work the land. The family was scattered. Asia had been married in

April of this year to John Sleeper Clarke. Her brother John was against the marriage, remembering how Clarke had coaxed him into making his stage debut before he was ready: it was the Booth name Clarke had wanted for his benefit. Johnny was cynically convinced it was the Booth name Clarke wanted from Asia, and he hissed to her before the wedding: "Always bear in mind you're a professional steppingstone." John was acting in Richmond; the uncritical Southerners flattered and petted him. Joseph Booth, after a few gauche one of them with Edwin during which stage appearances (the story goes) Edwin muttered to him between gritted teeth to "get off the stage for God's sake" had decided to stay off and to study medicine. Mrs. Booth and Rosalie were living in a house in Philadelphia that Edwin had rented; he and Mary meant to make their home there after they were married.
It was early evening when Booth and Badeau galloped up to the farm. Giving their horses in charge of a decrepit Negro who grinned that he had "had Massa Edwin in charge more than once," they unlocked the door of the brick house and tramped through the half-bare, echoing rooms. Some of Mr. Booth's costumes were still hanging there. His books were stacked on the shelves, and hundreds of his papers swamped drawers and cupboards, though not as many as

NEW STAR

RISES

IOI

there should have been. After his death Mrs. Booth, to destroy all references to his first marriage, had burned whole piles of were his letters. Asia and Johnny howled in protest.

They

and saw their best material up in flames. But Mrs. Booth had gone ahead obstinately, flying almost sullenly, rereading, tearing, and burning only stopfew minutes to cry a little or rip off a corner of a ping every some famous signature, which she handed as a sop page with
planning a
their father

memoir of

to her children.

With a couple of lighted candles stuck in shoes beside them, the young men sat down on a closet floor to paw through
what papers were left, first one, then the other, exclaiming with interest at an autograph on some mildewed playscript or a faded letter that still communicated the lively mood of its uncovered the tall counting-house long-cold writer. They
in which Mr. Booth had pasted his playbills, grown and their huge print turned brown. It was strange," yellow wrote Badeau in a Times article describing the nostalgic evelook at these bills that were first handled fifty years ning, "to and three thousand miles away; that told of the pleasures ago
ledgers

of people long since in their graves." Clear in their minds* eye they saw the packed theater, the green baize curtain, the actors bowing like courtiers, and they

heard the insistent clapping from hands fallen quiet forever. It was sobering to realize that those men and women, who at the moment of applauding and being applauded had felt so intensely of the present that they seemed to themselves to be immortal, had by now lain so long in their respective churchyards that the turf was sunken over them. Badeau looked at Booth's face aglow with interest in the the candlelight. It was not hard to see his father in him, and of the long career of triumphs the father journalist "thought

had gone through, and wondered whether fate had in store for
corresponding history." theyouth my Then they found a heap of playbills belonging to Edwin and compared the casts. "We thought of the time when some and we youngsters would be looking over these very lists,
at

side a

102

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

should have long since mouldered. The candles were getting low, you see." They slept on two sofas with a mattress laid across. Booth couldn't stop talking. "I fell into a doze with his voice ringing in my ears," Badeau told his readers. "Some of his fair admirers

would not have

envy me

my

as he talked, and doubtless they slept so long snooze on his arm. But 'twas dark, and I couldn't

see his eyes; besides, I had seen them all day." The same voice woke Badeau late in the

from the garden Sir Edward Mortimer's come hither to me!"

first

morning calling words: "Adam,

They washed at the pump, then had breakfast of some sandwiches. "Hamlet did the honors very gracefully," Badeau wrote. "You should have seen Lear washing a tea-cup, and Romeo making the bed. He had a way of doing even these
that

was worth looking at." Booth made faces for his friend out of

all his

plays.

Badeau

begged for Richard's "What-do-they-i'-the-North" look, and Booth put it on for him. He hurled himself on tiptoe as Cardinal Richelieu launching "the curse of Rome." He pressed
Shakespeare on Badeau as a gift; examining it Badeau noticed several of the plates were marked in Booth's writing: "Form this picture," and afterward he saw that Booth made the picture onstage. Out of a wardrobe Booth rummaged antiquated wigs: one that Kean had worn in King Lear; one that his father had worn in Othello this he tried on and unconsciously his face slipped

an

illustrated

later

Some wild story about the old man clung to everything they touched, and Badeau took note how in telling these tales Booth's voice was reverent, though he missed none of the humor. On their way to Baltimore in the afternoon they stopped at the cemetery where Booth, with some of the first money he had earned in the East, had raised a monument over his father's grave, a graceful obelisk twenty feet high of polished Italian marble rising from a pedestal of rough granite. Carved on one side was a sprightly epitaph:
into the lines of his father's.

ANEWSTARRISES
Behold the spot where genius lies, O drop a tear when talent dies! Of tragedy the mighty chief, His power to please surpassed belief.

IO3

Hie

yacet matchless Booth.

the second face of the obelisk was carved the actor's with his birth and death dates, inanimate brackets enname closing the living man's turbulent history. There was also a medallion head carved in profile. Again Badeau was struck by the likeness to Edwin, standing at his elbow, handsome and serious. And again he asked himself: Into what triumphs and dangers would the genius as well as the beauty that had survived the father lead the son? What was the hold of the past on the future?

On

PART THREE

CHAPTER

The Fireside
She lonfd

me for the dangers I had pasfd, And I loifd her that she did pity them.
Othello,

Act I, scene 3

BOOTH HAD made another good

Gary, to

whom

friend, Richard he was writing excitedly from

York at the end of June, 1860, that "this day week 'young Edwin* is no more! A sober, steady pater-familias wUl then" when just at this point he threw down his pen, jarred into a feeling of ill omen by the
strains

New

ing from a hand organ

not," they ran,

of a popular but doleful song that had begun unwindoutside. He knew the words. "Love

love not! ye hopeless sons of clay; Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers Things that are made to fade and fall away,
.
.

Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours.

On July 7 Booth and Mary Devlin were married at the house on West Eleventh Street of the Reverend Samuel Osgood, an Episcopal clergyman. Badeau went to the wedding, went with the bridegroom to give him support. Mary's sister
107

108

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Mrs. Magonigle was there with her husband, and John Wilkes had traveled up for the event; after the ceremony he flung his arms around Edwin's neck and kissed him.

mother and brother Joe along on the shared a cottage on the Canadian side honeymoon. They of Niagara Falls, and after a week Booth wrote to Badeau buoywhich Badeau did. Asia Clarke, antly urging him to join them, who was living in Philadelphia, wished Edwin's bride would venture into the whirlpool of the Falls and be sucked under. The newlyweds' friends were sent an announcement in the form of a visiting card.

Booth invited

his

all

But when Booth brought his bride home, Asia let it be known that not only would she not call on her sister-in-law
she would not even meet her or go where she might meet her. So Booth and Mary left Philadelphia and rented an apartment in New York at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on the corner of

Twenty-third

Street.

In front of their drawing-room fireplace was a black bearskin. As the autumn days drew in, Booth, wearing a velvet smoking jacket, lay on the bearskin close to the snapping flames, his chin cupped in his hands, saying over his roles to Mary. Sometimes he frowned, without speaking, into the firelight, until his young wife took up her guitar and sang softly:

THE FIRESIDE
Come live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove
That
hills

109

and

valleys, dales

and

fields,

Woods

or steepy mountain yields.

velvet curtains in the windows were drawn early, and dined at a small, round table laid for two, while a greythey hound Booth had bought for Mary crouched watchfully beside them. It was hard to leave the fireside for the theater. Booth was acting at the Metropolitan again, only its name had been changed to the Winter Garden; it was under new

The

manage-

ment. Mary sat in the stage box, demure and hidden from the audience by the box draperies until her husband entered, when she leaned forward absorbedly, her lips moving as she followed his speeches, in eerie, intimate communion with him. Once someone saw her shut her eyes and clench her fists: "Oh, I've
said the

wrong line and Edwin is saying it."

After the performance there would be a friend or two for midnight supper, since Booth was too keyed up to sleep. He saw Badeau almost as much as ever, and at the theater Mary and Badeau often sat gaily side by side. Dave Anderson rolled into town from San Francisco to assure Booth he had quitted the West in the nick of time. The legitimate theater was in a poor way out there. Minstrel and variety shows had taken over at the expense of the legitimate, and prominent actors (like Booth's brother Junius) were playing trivial roles. Junius was
in debt;
it."

Edwin had

consider as lost, but

it

already sent him $4,000, "which I may was my duty and I'm happy to perform

Except for intimates like Anderson and Badeau, the young couple neld the world at arm's length. "We were all in all to
each other," said

Mary later of this first year of their marriage.

lunching downstairs one day in the hotel dinroom, hating even such a semipublic appearance as this, ing but driven to it by a kte rehearsal. Suddenly Mary's grey-

They were

hound bounded

in,

trampled over the feet of a

at girl sitting

HO

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

the same table with them, and exuberantly pawed the front of Mary's dress. Everyone in the place stared. Booth scowled, said something angry to his Negro valet who ran up with a to the young lady. There leash, and Mary apologized winningly was no need to apologize. Miss Lilian Woodman had been

such a chance. languishing for just Earlier in the autumn Lilian had seen Booth play Hamlet in Boston, had been hit hard, and not yet suspecting how very she had entered, had tremulously large was the sisterhood that "that young actor would control confided to her family her destiny ." The Woodmans smiled. Not one of them had
the least acquaintance with anyone in the theater. York for the winter, by a Yet when they settled in wonderful coincidence their apartment was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel down the hall from Booth's and his bride's. Bravely

New

enlarging her dream castle to include a princess as well as a prince, Lilian worshiped from afar until by a stroke of luck quite of a piece with her most purple imaginings, the royal couple were seated at her table. Hot with excitement, she stole glances at the faces opposite: Hamlet's and Juliet's, the one lowering, with darting eyes, the other beaming and
tranquil.

bounded the greyhound, after which Booth sat than ever, furious at being made glummer conspicuous, but
in

Then

Mary and Lilian began to talk; it was impossible to be shy with anyone so unaffected as Mary. night or two later she called on Lilian, who never forgot the sight of her hesitating in the door: a slight girl with soft brown hair, in a soft, red dress with a chrysolite brooch her husband's gift shooting threads of green fire at her throat, and the magnificent dog like a guardian out of a fairy tale, stepping proudly and delicately

beside her.

The round table was laid for four, and Lilian and her sister Matrie had dinner with the Booths. Hamlet's moroseness soon wore off. He came down from Elsinore and made them almost die with his stories, as how on his travels he had seen laughing three puppies suspended in a padded basket over a Pullman

THE FIRESIDE
berth,
as it

III

and he threw himself into the character of each puppy howled and hung its head over the basket edge. Dinner over, the sisters listened almost holding their breaths while he lay on the bearskin, rapidly reviewing his part to cues fed him by Mary. Then followed the nervous drive to the theater ana the arrival while the house was still empty. Booth deposited the girls in the stage box and left them. Two hours later they were absorbed in the play when Hamlet himself, temporarily out of the scene, tiptoed up behind and startled them by whispering something in Mary's ear. "Edwin, Edwin," Mary begged, "not so loud! They'll hear

you speak."
Booth kissed her. "Why, they paid their money to hear me and speak I will!" speak, New Yorkers did not receive actors into their houses as freely as Bostonians, though as the winter wore on a number of hostesses were not above inviting the attractive Edwin Booth
("with Mrs. Booth, too, of course"), who almost always deHowever, Badeau, impatiently anxious for Booth to know eminent people and hold the position Garrick had held in England, had arranged for his election to the formidable but cosmopolitan Century dub. The dub was giving a recepclined.
tion,

in a crinoline of deep purple coat and pencil-slim trousers.

and Mary and Booth dressed for it reluctantly Margand Booth in his black evening

Ready to go, he grimaced at the Woodman girls, called in to see them in their fine clothes. "Now every man, woman
and child I meet will say the thing they always say: 'Mr. Booth, " do you believe Hamlet was really insane?' Then, rolling his eyes like the distraught Prince, he offered Mary his arm and away they swept to the evening's ordeal,
leaving their
little

friends bathed in the

II

wake of

their glory.

this autumn, Booth came for time into direct conflict with Edwin Forrest. All through Booth's boyhood the leading tragedians in America

Pkying at the Winter Garden

first

the

112

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
his father

had been

and

friends off.

Before Mr. Booth

Forrest, competitors onstage and left for California, he had pro-

that they appear together as Lucifer and Cain posed to Forrest in Byron's drama Cain, Mystery. "I want to respectively he explained. play the Devil," "It seems to me," growled Forrest, "that you've done that

pretty well all your Among dozens of English imports Forrest stood out as the first world-famous, American-born star. He was massively and with a prodigious voice. His style had not the splendidly built, intellect of Mr. Booth's, but he made up in power what he
life."

lacked in subtlety. True, he used every known hoary stage device, like the trick sword that rattled in its scabbard when fear was indicated. True, at his worst he bellowed and brayed
to express emotion

and had worked up a whole vocabulary of snorts and gurgles when the words provided him were inadeYet he could hold himself back as well as let go. In quate. he was deeply affecting. At his best he played quieter scenes grand parts grandly. His King Lear was unforgettable and so were his noble, simple half-savages like Othello, Spartacus the gladiator, and Metamora the Indian chief he had modeled this role on Push-ma-ta-ha, an Indian friend in whose wigwam he once lived familiarly. Forrest was a dark man inside and out. After his wife Catherine Sinclair divorced him for "cruel and licentious conduct" the countersuit for adultery, which he brought against her, having failed he began to brood on himself as a man persecuted and a genius unappreciated. The loudest applause became not enough for him, the heaviest receipts left him dissatisfied. He signed his name with a manic flourish:

THE FIRESIDE
last

named William Stuart jeered (anonymously) in the New York Tribune that Forrest's Hamlet in the scene with the Players was like some huge gypsy watching to rob a henroost, that his
vaunted Othello looked like a hangman. Any journalist, Forfoamed, who disparaged his Othello was fit only for a lunatic asylum or to be kicked downstairs, Stuart wrote with deliberate malice. He had been especially paid some suspected by the Tribune itself to write down Forrest. However, Walt Whitman, a completely unvenal critic,
rest

A bad notice of his acting would set him raving, and in the few years there had been bad notices. A blackguard critic

demanded in the Brooklyn Eagle if Forrest's blaring style were not a poor model for younger actors. These were only straws, yet they showed how the wind blew. When Forrest was young he had necessarily used a bold method to please a rough public. But during the thirty years of his supremacy that public, with more prosperity and leisure, had grown refined, while Forrest had simply grown older. before Booth made his New York debut as a star in Just 1857, Forrest had been forced to retire temporarily because
of rheumatism, a sign of age. Although he had been out of the theater three years, his prestige was still immense when in September, 1860, he returned to the stage, opening in Hamlet at Niblo's Garden in York.

New

A part of the interest in his return was owing to the reputation

Edwin Booth had made

in his absence. Forrest's loyal,

middle-aged friends panted to see

him put down the upstart, while younger playgoers, who knew Forrest's glories only by hearsay, were eager to compare him with Booth. The seats for
opening were sold at auction, bringing huge prices, and at success was greater than ever. He had had the field to

his

first his

himself for several weeks, playing King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Richard III and Richelieu, when in November Booth opened in Hamlet at the Winter Garden. Booth was just

twenty-seven. In the next month he, too, was seen as Richard

and Richelieu.

114
It

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
was now

that Booth made his first really deep impression York. Since he had played here last his acting had ranted occasionally, still gained in depth and control. He still was best in the lurid, mordant roles that gave his energy something to bite on, but his method was fining down. His individual style was forming, less noisy, more natural than his father's, and critics were beginning to recognize him as being more than a promising actor, to hail him as the leader in a new school, the embodiment of a new idea in tragic acting. "Since we saw him last," said the Tribune, "he has been at work, and his work has borne such noble fruit as can only be fully appreciated by those who knew him when he was the crude, unpolished, but still startling and original actor of three years ago, and who see him now, and note what gigantic strides he

on

New

has taken."
Forrest's greater name and experience would have triumphed over youth alone. It was the "new idea" that was too much for him, this more nervous, natural, poetic, and spiritual style. Dimly he realized that in the short time he had been away from the stage the tendency of the public's taste had changed. There was no sharp swing away from him. Most older playgoers found in his favor, but the younger ones and the more progressive and fastidious critics were hot for Booth, who

wrote cockily to Dick Gary: "I've had the best people, and
the entire press yields me the palm." One of the people (not the best) who

came to

see

him was

Mrs. Sam Cowell from England, the wife of a visiting singing comedian. Mrs. Cowell passed the time while her husband was hard at work entertaining by taking her daughter Sidney to serious plays, then writing up what she saw in her diary. She saw Booth in Brutus. "Sometimes a little tendency to rant distressed me, but the earnestness of his acting made amends for that fault. What eyes he has! Nearly all the women are in raptures about him, and I heard many expressions such as c 'Wen, now, ain't he pretty?' Oh, there he is again, I don't care for anything when he is not there' from the surrounding ladies. He annoyed Sidney and me by having one per.

THE FIRESIDE
tinacious lock of hair
play,

115

hanging over

his

which we were always wanting him to push back,

forehead through the

'but

Ke wouldn't.'"

The afterpiece this particular night was Garrick's Katherine and Petrucbio. Mrs. Cowell thought Booth "very light and buoyant in Petruchio, only a little too boyish, jumping about the stage and playing all manner of school-boy antics." The
Booth's dish, any part wasn't really

more than Benedick

in

Much Ado, which he

also tried

now and then. His comedy had

of a rather sinister brand and the jabbing irony great elegance that helped put across his lago and Richard III But he had never the relaxed, spontaneous gift of the born comic like
his brother-in-law Clarke, who on his own low level could convulse an audience simply by looking at it and saying,

"

Whoops!"
Booth interrupted
his

New

York season

to

do Macbeth in

Philadelphia opposite Charlotte Cushman, who found his style effete. "She is down on me as an actor, says I don't know any-

thing at

all

about Hamlet."

There was general disagreement about Miss Cushman's own Hamlet. The rare pleasure taken by this brawny, deep-voiced woman in playing men's parts was indulgently interpreted as the whim of a great actress, and she was very great, and in 1 860 was at her peak. But as Hamlet or as Romeo, Cardinal Wolsey or Claude Melnotte, her peculiar, hollow tones, which seemed to belong to neither sex, hit on the ear perplexingly. Her large bosom, which couldn't be concealed, contrasted strangely with her masculine features; she looked neither man nor woman. Mary Devlin had once been her Juliet and during those performances, Miss Cushman confessed, she did indeed wish "that she had been a man!" When she played Lady Macbeth, it was obviously the lady who wore the kilts in that castle. Booth's own private idea of the character was of a red-haired little enchantress, very feminine in her ambitions. Cushman's Lady Macbeth was a ravenhaired Amazon who bullied her husband, stalked him into a

corner and then, as somebody

who saw

her put

it,

regularly

Il6

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
him" with
lifted

large, meaty "pitched into a wonderful performance in its way, pitiless, macabre, and time that Booth onstage felt the clamp fascinating. Yet every of her muscular fingers on his shoulder and heard the cellolike tones rise out of her chest in her famous line

arm and

fist. It

was

He
he was
terribly

that's

coming must be provided

to snap back: "Well,

for,

tempted

why

don't

you

kill him? You're a great deal bigger than I am." Not only their sizes (Cushman complained that so many "little men" Macbeth), but also their two styles didn't

played

Cushman was forty-four, of the older pull well together. and she shared Forrest's impatience with all but obmethod, vious meanings. She explained the discrepancy between Macbeth's words and deeds by supposing he was drunk through
most of the play and his wife was drunk too. She considered Booth's performance underacted. His Macbeth was "a mere willow" like his Hamlet, too soft and refined. "Exceedingly at him, "but, dear boy, don't be afraid interesting," she boomed of overdoing it. Remember Macbeth was the great-grandfather
of
all

the

Bowery

ruffians."

Forrest took time off from

performances.
disgust.
side,

When

his rival

Booth

strolled
at

gazing moodily

see one of these came on, Forrest huffed with on excessively "naturally" from the the ground. "What's the damned fool

New York to

doing?" snorted Forrest.

"He

looks like a super hunting for a

sixpence." Forrest behaved himself through the next four acts until Cushman moaned sepulchrally that "all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this
little hand," and this was more than he could stomach. "Little hand!" he scoffed. "Little hand! Why, it's as big as a codfish!" The editor of "The Easy Chair" in Harper's for April called Booth's acting "the sensation of the city. New York rings with Booth's triumphs." Over at Niblo's Garden, Forrest also played to good houses.

THE FIRESIDE
Yet as though conscious that the homage, which had once been his alone, must henceforth be divided, he grew greedier for than ever. When one night, in the middle of one of
applause
in front

tremendously delivered speeches, a well-meaning person hushed a rising murmur of appreciation, Forrest protested angrily afterward as he took his curtain call, saying that
his

was the actor's reward; that it was his due; that anywould rob him of it would pick a pocket. one who The theater had made Forrest. It had fed and clothed him; its literature had given him almost his only education. Now,
applause

with

his

home wrecked,
home,

come

his

his wife alienated, the theater had behis wife, his as he felt the everything.

And

his children, just perceptibly public,

beginning to turn

from him, he knew a bereavement and humiliation wholly

comprehensible to his young competitor, reluctantly to act for a living.
Ill

away
in-

who

left his fireside

Booth wrote to Lawrence Barrett, who had bogged down company in Boston and appealed for nelp to get out: "Don't turn up your nose at the stock, Larry. . . Starabout the country is sad work a home is better." ring Anticipating what would be Barrett's retort, he went on: "I must pursue the path Fate has marked out for me. ... I'd rather there was no such thing as starring I'd rather stay in one place & have a home, but of course I'd like to stand A.i.
in a stock
.

in

my trade."

Already he stood perilously high for a man only twentyseven, and Mary's greatest dread was that his career would "culminate too quickly." Booth himself feared his work was beginning to grow stale in commercial America, where "art degenerates below the standard even of a trade" this was his withering verdict. He was convinced he needed to breathe the native air of art whether in France, Italy, or England depended on the chance that offered, but wherever it flowed free, and that meant "away, away from here." So he had written to Guy just before his marriage, and he

Il8

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

had expected then that Badeau would make the trip to Eutrouble will be, I shall have a wife rope with him. "The only to look after. ... I can go on traveling through this country a great deal of four, perhaps five, years longer, and make nor is not what I want either, but

money;

money position^ unless I can feel within the consciousness of deserving it. ... well aware that unless I aim at a larger circumperfectly ference than the rim of the 'almighty dollar' (which one can't I'll go down 'eye-deep' in the quicksand of help in America),

?m

popular favor." In the spring of 1861 he had a tentative offer to play in that when he and Mary sailed Badeau England. He still hoped could go too, but in April Fort Sumter was fired on, and men's worlds turned upside down overnight. On March 4 President Lincoln had been inaugurated. After Fort Sumter's fall he called out the militia to the number of 75,000 to defend the Union, and among the men to put on the blue uniform were

Badeau and Gary.

York was in wildest excitement. The streets were full of soldiers drilling; almost every morning the drum sounded rub-a-dub. Almost every afternoon a new regiment early: swung along Broadway under the bright sun very warm for and little, past eight and ten April, under a thousand flags big that flickered from top to bottom with waving story buildings
handkerchief to "Hail Columbia!" and "The Star Spangled Banner," while the police cleared the way with their truncheons and the hurrahing crowds rolled backward and forward. Booth was finishing his season at the Winter Garden in a
house thronged with military men who hadn't yet left the city and with business men in from the provinces. Aroused, anxious, nagged by headaches from the glare and noise of the parades outside, his audiences were more ready than ever to enter worlds a step removed from reality and to identify themselves with heroes larger than life, sad beyond tears. "I remember well," writes Mrs. John Sherwoo$, prominent New Yorker whose opinions were often in the papers, "in the first year of our war, when we were profoundly miserable and

New

THE FIRESIDE
what a relief it was to go and see Booth in Hamlet" for the North and so was Junius, but the War cut across the family. The English-born Mrs. Booth was first a mother; her loyalty was for her children and all she cared for was to keep them united. This was impossible. Although the two girls vacillated with Asia finally coming to rest on the Union side Joseph, though still a medical student in
frightened,

Edwin was

bany, New York, when the fort was fired on, railed at the North and praised the South so recklessly that die citizens ordered him to shut up or get out of town. Joe was the only Booth even to sniff gunpowder. John had been in uniform just once, a borrowed uniform. In December, 1859, he had temporarily joined the Richmond Grays who stood guard under Colonel Robert E. Lee at the foot of the scaffold in Charles Town, Virginia, where John Brown was hanged. Johnny was a fire-eating antiabolitionist, but the

Charleston, served as a doctor with the Confederates in the attack on Fort Sumter; and John, who had been acting in Al-

would-be hero he knew in himself acknowledged the heroism

in the

doomed old

leader.

"He felt a throb

of anguish," writes

Asia, "as he beheld the old eyes straining their anxious sight for the multitude he vainly had thought would rise to rescue

him."

Johnny told his sister: "Brown was a brave old man; his heart must have broken when he felt himself deserted." On July 2 r the Federals' Army of the Potomac was whipped
at Bull Run. Washington streets seethed with the demoralized troops of half a dozen regiments pouring in from Virginia across the river. Yet while thousands of men had put on the uniform, blue or gray, a great many more thousands con-

tinued with what they were doing, as lawyers, cabinetmakers, and actors. Booth had given away clerks, horse traders, poets a his caul, his unique talisman, either to Gary or to Badeau he realized later, for on looking back it could be mistake,
seen that his luck

went with it. His vague European hopes had

crystallized into an invitation to play at the Haymarket Theatre in London. Europe at last! "It is the grand turning-point of

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
my career," he exulted to Gary (Captain Gary now), "though it pains me to leave my country at this rime."
had been scribbling "I, I, I," suddenly occurred to him he his letter with not a word for the friend soon to face through battle. So, "God bless you, my boy!" he wrote. "Don't get tired of the hard fare; your patriotism is not in the stomach, I know, but stick to the flag, Dick, as I intend to do, though
It
all

far away."

worried about Mary, who was exand she made Booth promise to cable from pecting a child, the other side "the very minute you have news." Arrived in London, the first thing Booth and Mary heard was that a letter urging Booth not to come had crossed them
Lilian

Woodman was

on

the

die manager, J. B. Buckstone, now admitted late in the day that he was "rather afraid of tragedy." But since Booth was here, Buckstone persuaded him to open in The Merchant of
Venice, against Booth's better judgment because Shylock was

way

over.

The Haymarket was

comedy

theater,

and

one of

his least effective parts.

Something went wrong with Booth's chemistry as an actor this long looked-f or opening night in London, September the superciliousness of 30, 1 86 1. The manager's reluctance and the English cast had dampened his flame instead of blowing on it. Americans in the audience felt puzzled and let down to see him walk through Shylock correctly and lifelessly. The reviews were cooL Next he gave A New Way to Fay Old Debts, gave it to

on

the halfapplause hardly loud enough to chase the echoes from which was die wrong house, for one thing. As empty house, Buckstone explained, the Haymarket had neither the name nor the facilities for tragic productions. Added to this, Booth's time in England was badly chosen. Relations between Eng-

was

land and America were strained; almost the entire British press for the Confederates. Booth tried Richard HI, always a winner in the land across the water where art had fallen below the standard even of a

THE FIRESIDE
trade.

121

Here in London, in art's native air, the production Buckthrew together for his imported star was almost a burThe supers' tin armor was so clumsy and heavy that lesque. one actor who had knelt in homage couldn't get up again, while another saluted and could barely bring his arm down. For his last effort Booth announced Richelieu. The faintly
stone

Haymarket actors invited their friends backstage to over the biggest fiasco of all. But the tinselly melodrama, gloat which had not been seen in London for eleven years, had the draw of a novelty, and when the curtain fell after the first act they heard, not the polite spatter of token applause, but the thunder of enjoyment. The famous old comedian Mr. Chiphad played Polonius to the Hamlets of Kemble pendale, who and Kean, was one of those spying from the wing and he rushed over to Buckstone: "The finest piece of acting I ever " saw in my life, sir! Buckstone, very deaf, stood with his hand to his ear, torn between relief at his star's belated success and chagrin that he hadn't opened with Richelieu. Mary's confinement was near, and Booth left her in London while he acted in Manchester and Liverpool. In Manchester his
hostile

and Buckingham were earnestly performed by a youth named John Henry Brodribb, who was down on the bills as Henry Irving. He was a very ordinarylooking young man, like a bank clerk or chemist's assistant, but behind his rather sloping forehead raged an ambition of
Laertes, Cassio, Bassanio,

the implacable sort that could prod a real clerk into becoming bank manager or embezzling bank funds. Irving's ambition

took another

line: inhibited

his inability to

do himself

justice onstage

studied Booth,

who was

all

he chafed at and he devotedly that he was not and yet intended

self-conscious,

and

to be.
Business in the provinces was morrifyingly below what Booth was used to in America. He hurried back to London to be beside Mary when their baby was born at Fulham on December 9, just at the time, after the Trent affair, when England was within an ace of entering the American War on the Confederate side and British papers were storming against "that

122
spirit

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

their

of senseless egotism which induces the Americans, with dwarf fleet, and shapeless mass of incoherent squads, which they call an army, to fancy themselves the equal of France by land, and of Great Britain by sea."

This was enough to make Americans in London who were Union sympathizers twice the patriots they had been at home. Galled and humiliated by his British reception, so far below his hopes, homesick, and tormented by the thought that his child would be born under a foreign flag, possibly an enemy one, Booth made a canopy of the Stars and Stripes over Mary's bed so that the baby, slipping into the world some hours later, was literally born under it. 'Tfhank God, all is well. daughter," he cabled to Lilian.

He acted no more in England.

"I think the fall will find

me

in Boston again, a poorer but a wiser man than when I left there," he wrote to Dick Gary. he had accumulated in Living in London on the savings

commercial America, he went to the funeral of his mother's mother, old Mrs. Holmes. Most of his time he spent with Mary, who gained strength so slowly that it was March before he was able to shepherd her, looking frail but radiant, and the baby, named Edwina after him, to Paris, the Paris of the Second Empire. He didn't act here either, but took Mary sightEdwina they engaged a seeing and to buy French gowns. For nurse, Marie Fournier, who came with them as they crossed back to England and sailed for New York in August, 1862.

IV
Booth reappeared at the Winter Garden he found his London engagement had paid for itself by giving him a certain added prestige in New York. Again Forrest played in competition to him at Niblo's, and both stars had full houses; there were audiences and to spare. While at Antietam dead men lay rotting on the blasted fields ( 14,000 Federal casualties, over 1 1,000 Confederate), the theaters were crammed to their flag-draped roofs. The War had touched Booth too close for
comfort.

When

He

heard the news soon after landing that Captain

THE FIRESIDE
knew what war and

123

Richard Gary had been killed in action. For an instant Booth battle meant. "Dick was a hero born," he wrote to Gary's sister, Mrs. Felton, and three days later to his even dearer friend Badeau, stationed at Memphis on General Sherman's staff: "To talk about such old-time nonsense as my own affairs is now too trivial. May the God of Battles guard you, Ad." letter from Gary, found among his things and forwarded by his widow, was delivered to Booth. Not long before writing it Gary had been in Baltimore, where he saw Macbeth starring John Wilkes, and he had believed Edwin might be interested
.

John was much too some of his tones were melodramatic, Gary thought. Although remarkably like Edwin's, his face onstage was wooden, and the performance had reminded Gary of nothing so much as "a blood-and-thunder melo-drama full of sheet iron and burnt rosin and ghosts and other horrors," he had once seen in the old Federal Street Theater in Boston. John had resolved to become a star when he read in the papers that Edwin had got five thousand dollars for a month's engagement in Boston. Billing himself as J. WILKES BOOTH, he exploded on the world as die evil Pescara in The Apostate in Montgomery, Alabama. This was in October, 1860. In February, 1 86 1, he had marched north into what until then was Edwin's domain, acting Pescara again in Albany, and his performance in its fury and horror was so uncannily like his father's, which he had never seen, that a meeting of spiritualists in the city came out with a statement that the indomitable old man's perturbed spirit must have been hovering about the son onstage. On February 18 President-elect Lincoln had passed through Albany on the route to Washington for his inauguration. John had watched as one of the crowd and glared. He
in his opinion of his little brother's acting.

hated the

damn Yanks.
to be "the Booth," to shoulder his to approach the level of his father's this ambition that kept him in the North even
glori-

What he was after was way ahead of his brothers,

fame, and
after

it was war broke out and the South he loved was fighting

124

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
When

Edwin sailed for England John saw his chance. ously. starred in St. Louis, in Chicago, then in Baltimore; and here

He

in the city most intimately associated with

all

the Booths his

MYSELF ALONE! posters proclaimed defiantly: I In March, 1862, he made his starring debut in

AM

New York in

the most famous of the family vehicles, Richard 1IL Both he and Junius were a little jealous of Edwin. It was irritating to
Juhius to be outstripped by a younger brother, discouraging to John always to stand in an older brother's shadow. "On account of the likeness the papers deigned to notice me," he

had written dryly to Edwin from Richmond

his career.

at the start of

John had
his

his share

The Harvard-educated Dick Gary might find him bombastic, yet there were critics who already rated him
head acted.

of their father in him: the very hairs of

higher than his more polished brother "the best of living Romeos," one of them considered him. The passion of his embrace lifted Juliet out of her shoes. Desdemona winced at the bang of his scimitar when as Othello he flung himself on her
insane. After

body. His Hamlet was mustachioed, hot-blooded, definitely Richard III he slept smothered in oysters to heal

the bruises got during a stage battle fought in deadly earnest. Mr. Ellsler, the Cleveland manager, who had known Junius Brutus Booth and who was partial to the old-fashioned technique, swore that John Wilkes "has more of the old man's power in one performance than Edwin can show in a year. He has the fire, the dash, the touch of strangeness."

At first sight Lilian and Mattie Woodman realized that

Mary, who were subtly
off them; a
little

could never again be quite as they had been with Booth and
altered

things

by

their travels.

A bloom was
its

veneer of affectation had taken

clothes or to the

Whether owing to Mary's Paris

place.

baby squirming in the arms of its smart French bonne wasn't to be analyzed, but Booth and Mary seemed to belong more to this world. all met They again at the Booths' apartment, and the young

women had

hardly had time to

kiss

and admire when there

THE FIRESIDE 125 was the portent of a greater change. A card was handed in and
Booth read it aloud: "Mr. and Mrs. Richard Henry Stoddard." Instead of frowning and shaking his head violently as he would have done a year earlier, he said: "Show them in," and then that he and Mary had never seen these Stoddards, but explained in common. they had a friend was a thin, bearded, pleasant-looking man. Mrs. Stoddard Stoddard was an enigma to the young Woodmans. Angular and oldish (she was thirty-nine), with a face like a brown leaf, and wearing an arty brown dress woven with a white she had no charm whatever in the girls' eyes. Yet they figure, saw Booth, usually so reserved with women, hurry over to her with arms held out and gather up her hands. "Edwin!" she said
intensely.

"Elizabeth!" he said. Delicately pulling undone her bonnet he lifted off her bonnet himself and led her to a chair. strings,

couples began gabbing intimately, as though were old acquaintances, Lilian and Mattie slipped out of they
the room.

And when both

This meeting with the Stoddards opened a door to Booth and Mary. Their joint life altered almost from this moment. At home the baby was queen and reigned from the bearskin in front of the fire; one afternoon when Badeau called they all burst out laughing to see how exactly tiny Edwina's attitudes (creeping, rearing up on her knees and collapsing backward) were like her father's in "Richard III in the fight with Richmond. But Booth no longer lay there himself and Mary's when some heavy van rumguitar hung silent, only vibrating bled by, while she in her most pronounced Paris gown and he in the formal blacks he loathed took their places in the circle of writers and artists the clever Stoddards had formed around themselves. Richard Stoddard earned his living in the New York Custom House. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who had once worked in the customhouse in Boston, had got him the toiled, rather But Stoddard's heart, like Hawthorne's, lay in a world post. remote from his place of business. Both he and his wife were

126

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
as poets

known

to readers of the Atlantic Monthly and Elizabeth Stoddard had published a novel that, like Harper's. herself, was too tart to be popular with the sweet-toothed general public,

but had won critical praise. Their modest drawing room in lodgings on Tenth Street was not as austere as the Century Club, where the names were Bohemian as PfafPs beer cellar under the greater. It was not as sidewalk on Broadway, where baggy-eyed writers and cartoonists for the magazines sat eating German pancakes, and Walt Whitman, with his shirt collar open, tipped back his chair and his chin as he drained the steins at his special table.

Nor was

the Stoddards' group fashionable society. During their first evening at Tenth Street Booth and Mary were enchanted to meet Bayard Taylor, the author-traveler; Fitzhugh

Ludlow, a writer who had smoked hashish and had a captivating wife; Launt Thompson, the sculptor, and a blond young
poet,

Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Most actors chafe and burn to be the center of things, but not Booth. All the eloquence and aggressiveness that were somewhere inside him came out in his acting, but his role once put off, his public manner was defensively retiring. He was a lame curtain speaker. At banquets, including the ones later given
in his honor, he seldom opened his mouth, except as a reporter once noted, "to put something into it." With scholars and

those he called "educated men" he was shy and respectful to such a that Dick Gary, after introducing Booth to his

point distinguished brothers-in-law, Cornelius Felton, professor of Greek at Harvard, and Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-born natural-

ist,

had rallied him, laughing: "Why, dear boy, these men " are just like others! At fashionable parries Booth felt all legs. Louisa May Alcott, a sturdy wallflower herself, had a glimpse of him at a Boston re-

my

ception.

"Saw Booth at the Goulds," she wrote in her journal, "a handsome, shy man, glooming in a corner." .When they were married, his dear Mary had comforted him that she liked his backwardness, but then liked

Mary

everything in him. She had given freely of her candid, loving

THE FIRESIDE
nature,

127

and he had accepted unthinkingly and without thanks. She had her reward in that now, after two years of marriage, his face sometimes lit up with a ray reflected from hers; the terrible tensions that bound him had relaxed; even his jokes were less grim. The loyalty of her love had soothed and encouraged him until he could feel at ease in an unconventional circle like the Stoddards', to which he contributed more than he realized. He was the biggest lion the Stoddards had caught. Into their little drawing room he brought a breath of fresh, of color, the carnival colors of the theater a spicy air and patch " their intellectual black and white. "A splendid savage! against Fitzhugh Ludlow called him, and some of the others, "A natural."

Even

his clean-shaven cheeks, a

phasized

his exotic

whom wore

mark of his trade, emthese gentlemen, every one of among a mustache or side whiskers or a full beard.
look
teas

There were

and dinners and midnight suppers

at the

Stoddards*, at Launt Thompson's in the Studio Buildir j, where shrouded busts lurked on pedestals, and in the painter Albert Bierstadt's much grander studio stacked with landscape canvases. Then it was the Booths' turn to give Woodman, the youngest guest there, was on

a party. Lilian tenterhooks to

host's sleeve.

meet the bachelor poet and timidly plucked her

"Show me

Tom Aldrich back, and with Aldrich's introduction to her the prince Lilian had dreamed about lost his Hamlet melancholy and became ebullient

Aldrich, please." "I mount! I fly!" said Booth, smiling. He flew down the room to drag

and a blond.

They sat down to supper at a long white-covered table clinked as lighted by candles in branched candlesticks. Glasses
toasts were drunk. This was the first time Lilian had seen the Booths receive formally. In spite of her new preoccupation she noticed, not only what a genial host Booth made, with Mrs. Stoddard at his right hand, but also that he took no wine when the others did. Since his marriage he had drunk sparingly or not at all. Mary's influence had restrained him, her influence and the

128

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
No

quiet life they led alone together. Yet now that they dined out almost constantly it was not so easy to say and stick to it. Temptation was served with every gay meal, and before long Booth regularly accepted a glass, just one. Soon he tossed off glass after glass; the old days were back. And gradually a

came over Mary. She who had always been joyful was now
so.

change

only sometimes

CHAPTER

The Palace of Night

O my
...
7
still

And never from Depart again.

love! ivifef imll stay with thee,

my

this palace

of

dim night
V, scene 3

Romeo and Juliet, Act

ON

A November morning Booth and Mary with

the baby and her nurse left for Boston, where Booth had an engagement. They were only to be gone two weeks, yet it seemed to the Woodman girls who stood waving after the carriage that there was something ominous about this going, the sky was so heavily overcast, and the husband and wife seemed unusually subdued. Only a day or so before Booth's characteristically dramatic knock had sounded on the Woodmans' door and he and Mary had swept in. Her eyes glowing, Mary held out to Lilian a beautifully painted miniature of her husband, set in a locket, which he had just given her. She could hardly speak for pleasure, and laughing at her incoherence, pulled his head aown to hers and murmured Othello's words: "O sweet, I prattle out of fashion, and I dote in mine own comforts."

my

At the piano,
ding March"

bars of Mendelssohn's ""Wedthe room, then stopped playing, pealing through

she sent the

first

129

130
tional that

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

looked up at her husband and said in a tone so soberly emoit changed the whole atmosphere: "When death takes you, my best beloved, nothing will be more my solace than this last gift. I shall wear it eternally on my heart." She had seemed to dwell on death lately and this time Lilian dared to ask: "Why do you always think and speak of Mr.

Booth

as

"He needs me," Mary answered. "He needs me so." Her eyes
She sprang up and threw her arms around and Mattie, shyly looking on at a side of their him, and Lilian friends' lives until now kept hidden from them, heard her

being the one to go?"

were

full of tears.

"Almighty God, prayer half-sobbed against Merciful Father, spare him the cross! Take him first, I do beseech Thee." lady friend of the Stoddards, named appropriately Lucy Pry, mentioned to Mrs. Stoddard that she had "watched with sorrow Edwin's propensity to drink by the way in which he has drunk porter." Miss Pry had actually "counted five bottles a day that Edwin has drunk, which proves he has the apI have once or twice expostulated with him but he petite. would only laugh and make some funny reply. Mary did not

his shoulder:

seem to notice it at all." Miss Pry was not the only one acutely aware of every glass Booth poured out, yet only those who knew Mary best suspected what she went through on those all too public evenings when she watched her husband drifting out of, and
from, his true self. "What is Edwin thinking about?" twittered Miss Pry. "Why does he give himself up in this when he has everything to live for?" way

away

"Mr. Booth
or twice.

is

not well today,"

Mary only said

quietly once

Lilian Woodman, intruding inadvertently, saw Booth the floor of his apartment, holding his head in his pacing hands. "Since daylight," he cried, "I haven't slept. one can imagine the call of that desire. When it engulfs me I could

Once

No

sell

my

once

soul, my hope of salvation, for just one glass." And the only time she went so far Mary spoke to Lilian of

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

131

those mornings-after when, sick and heartbroken, her husband sobbed in her arms and fell before her in pathetic selfabasement to clasp her knees and promise . . . promise. The Booths had not been their full rime in Boston when a
letter arrived for Lilian

from Mary to say their plans had sudwas not well, and the Boston doctor denly changed. Mary who examined her urgently recommended she spend the winter in some quiet place. Booth expected to act at the Winter Garden again in February, and Mary hoped to come to New York with him for this engagement of four weeks. But their home for the winter was to be in Dorchester, outside Boston, where they had rented a small house. She asked that the apartment at the hotel, which had been their first home together,
be dismantled

by their friends and their things shipped north. of disease in Mary's lungs had been detected, though Signs she did not say so. The anxiety to be read between the lines of her sad, little letter was not primarily for herself. Booth did

York in February, but Mary most reluctantly behind. "Oh, take care of him, take care of him," she stayed begged Lilian. Again for an instant the dark, hidden side of her marriage was revealed to the young girl.
go back to
In Boston hospitable Julia
the "Battle

New

Ward Howe, who

herself forever

since the

War's outbreak had distinguished

by writing

of the Republic," gave a large reception was still in love with them, called Booth "Great B." and Mary "Little B." "I do wish you to know Mr. Booth," she insisted to her good friend Senator Charles Sumner before the party. "I don't know that I care to," said Sumner. "I have outlived

Hymn

for the Booths. She

my

interest in individuals."

Mrs.

Howe remarked in private that "fortunately, God Al-

mighty had not, by last accounts, got so far." "Like being dragged to hell, to go to meet a set of damned fools," Booth muttered when Mary roused him to dress for the Howes'. He had fallen asleep after his performance. Mary wore a dress of pale-colored silk, high in the neck and fastened with

132
a brooch
"It

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
made from one large opal it mused later.
real ovation to

an unlucky stone, people

who had noticed

was a

tion to Elizabeth Stoddard. "All

all

Edwin," she wrote with satisfacBeacon Street was invited and

Beacon Street was there."

"My

child," Junius Brutus

"everybody knows

Tom

Booth had warned his son, Fool." Radiating stiffness, Booth

shook hands with "everybody," then fled with eight-year-old Maud Howe into a corner, where he sat on the floor and made dolls and rabbits out of his handkerchief. Mary hid her shyness better, but "you know us both too well," she reminded Elizabeth, "for me to affect any delight at such a gathering 'twas tedious & perhaps heartless. I love
Mrs.

Howe though."

of the guests had shown curiosity combined with a amounting to hardness, and Mary had noticed distinct condescension toward her and Edwin in the bearing of James T. Fields, editor of the Atlantic Monthly and junior partner in Ticknor and Fields, the Boston publishers. Yet almost the next day Fields called on Booth, who made an excuse not to see him. "And the cad," declared Mary, "returned with a re-

Many

reserve

quest to see written.

them

at their

home

How I hate such hypocrisy! They don't care for us."

tonight: a regret

is

already

Since the Booths had been in Boston, one or the other of sent the Stoddards a line almost every day. Ever since meeting these Stoddards they had been inseparable from

them had

them, were not put off by Elizabeth's terrible cleverness, which frightened most people, were if anything attracted by her independent manner. 'Strange how completely you and Dick have entered into our life and thoughts," Mary marveled to Elizabeth when she first sat down to let her new friend know she wasn't well enough to come back to New York. "The first words we uttered after the cruel decision was what you &

Dick would

feel!"

better understand a temperament like Elizabeth's. "I have thought ever since I met you that your genius was . * struggling to get into the daylight.
.

From living with Edwin she could

Edwin Booth at the time of his marriage to Mary Devlin,

860.

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

You know
know how
star in
I live

133
ills

with genius: am forced to bear the

untaught mind,
it is

&
I

restlessness of his

his

undefined purposes:

&

dreadful

to suffer as

you & Edwin suffer."

At the Boston Theater Booth had had the best houses of any town. "Tell Dick that Edwin has made nearly $5,000 two weeks." Then Mary thought of the contrast with her in the literary friends' earnings. "Dear Elizabeth, who knows better
of your hard-pressed struggle. . would what is the use of such offering to your proud souls. The only thing we can do is to love you ... & for your dear sakes lay by something to purchase joy for you

than

we do

We

share with you, but

&

ourselves in books and pictures." Yet whatever flowed into Booth's

bank account seeped out

over on December 20, he returned briefly to New York to untangle his affairs. "Do look after Edwin," Mary appealed to Elizabeth. "He will be low-spirited enough without me, so pray do try and comfort him." While he was temporarily away she moved with the yearold Edwina and the nurse Marie out to Dorchester, having chosen this town because a Dr. Erasmus Miller, celebrated near locally for his treatment of consumptive cases, lived by. "He has inspired me with a great deal of faith. All agree in saying that he is wonderful!" Economy was one of her reasons for staying near Boston. Dr. Sims in New York would have cost her three times as much as Dr. Miller. But Dorchester was a lonely town, far out
in the country. "An excellent place to study Sanscrit!" a lady had joked to her at Mrs. Howe's, and Mary had smiled ruefully.

again in a dozen directions, and he exploded to Dick Stoddard that he was "sick as hell & worried to death." His engagement

"I

know what
.
.

need, and
I

isolation

providing can keep Mrs. Howe & others like her at bay. She is the most importunate of her sex." Mary had dined at Mrs. Howe's by herself and met Dr. Henry Beecher there, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
.

my good sense

bids

me

bear the

134

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
visitors,

But she discouraged

admitting to Elizabeth: "I

saw

my doctor yesterday! No, I will tell you nothing about it. All my courage is gone. I pass half my time in tears." Then Booth came back and joined her in Dorchester for the
interval before his

engagement began
ail

at the

Winter Garden,

and for a short time

was

bliss.

so happy here," she told Elizabeth, her dearest con7 fidante. "I look with dread and horror upon the four weeks . ensue. . differently you & I are separation that must a man, so free from human vices. is so perfect placed. Richard . . . Well you know the demon that pursues a noble, unlike Edwin's. He is so gentle, so yielding, so

"He

is

How

governed spirit abst&mous now & I advise with him victory shall be his."

&

he promises that the

Transcript had advertised Richard Stoddard's new narpoem The King's Bell, and Booth and Mary read it over the hero Felix's together in bed, crying sentimentally death. Handsome Felix in his youth searches for happiness,

The

rative

tries

wine,

tries

women;

his desires

Raging intensely like volcanic fires, Have burned away, and left a waste behind.

His own case exactly, Booth felt. And he wrote to Stoddard: I could tell you stories of my past, and I will some day, and they may cause you to think more leniently of the faults and wickedness of today. ... Of course dear little wife knows all about my youth (ah, what a mockery! 'twas old age to me; my youth began with my marriage only) .... My sorrows began at so green an age that the callow squab grew tough ere he had down to pluck" Their little rented house was on Washington Street. Its windows at the back overlooked a snow-covered slope undulating down toward Dorchester Bay; you could see iceskimmed water from the bedroom window. There was a great
"Dick! ...

but Mary was not up to it. Hopefully each of this cold January, 1863, she stood in front of her morning
deal of
sleighing,

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

135

mirror and pinched her cheeks to see if they had grown fuller. The rest of the day she lay on the sofa and her letters to Elizabeth in her pointed, rather elegant "lady's hand" were written on a book held in her lap. "I have laid all my plans for a home next winter in New York. ... I do nothing all day but lay out bright visions for the future: it pleases me beyond but experience has taught me that it all things to dream thus are masters of our destiny only to a very small all is folly.

We

extent."

She roused herself to drive into Boston with her husband John Wilkes act at the Boston Museum. They were recognized and applauded as they walked down the aisle to their seats. John had opened at die Museum on January 17, and if Edwin's Boston engagement had been brilliant, John's simply broke the record "extraordinary," the Transcript called it. As a rival, John's hot breath was on Edwin's neck. Edwin and Mary saw him play Pescara. "A bloody villain of the deepest red," exclaimed Booth with relish to Stoddard, "and my brother presented him rare enough for the most
to see
fastidious 'beef-eater.'
.

He

is full

of the true

grit.

am

delighted with him and feel the name of Booth to be more of a hydra than snakes and things ever was." Booth loved Dorchester and the country life. He planned moonlight sleigh rides when Mary should be well enough. "He is so natural, so much himself when he is away from the stage," Mary explained to Elizabeth, "that I almost lament " he is ever forced to assume the 'sock & buskin.' Could she go with him to New York in February? They almost quarreled over it. Booth was against her going. "I've given her my reasons and if she likes 'em so; ii she lumps 'em so also." This was to Dick. Elizabeth heard Mary's side, plaintively

put forward. "Edwin got it into his head, I don't know how that I wanted to go & stay during his entire stay there. This arrangement he very justly thought an extravagant & foolish one for we cannot afford to keep up two establishments. / had long ago decided not to go, or if I did, only for a few

136

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

of the

go on & see him for a few days in doing which I fancied I would be giving him great pleasure & content. The 'sorry child' then begged me to hold to my original plan & assured me how happy he would be to have me there." The question was settled for them when Mary, on top of her other troubles, strained a tendon and Dr. Miller prescribed absolute rest for her. Booth insisted to his friends later that he had left her "in the bloom of health and hope, throwing kisses to me as I parted from her." Booth's perceptions these days were mostly turned inward; he had few to spare, even for Mary, whose health was failing steadily to any eye but his. To feel it fail and to be conscious at the same rime of her husband's need for her, of the inevitable danger in their separation, was a thing too bitter to be dwelt on, and she did not dwell on it. But it was at this time that alone in her bedroom she wrote to Lilian, who was all aglow with her own love affair, for she had become engaged to Tom Aldrich: "I send him to you. Oh, take care of him, take
desire to

my

days, but he did not so understand & after a good deal of talk I silly matter, indignantly refused to go at all: giving as he did not seem to appreciate natural reasons, that

my

care of him, for

my sake."
II

his friends saw Booth in New York they knew was wrong. He seemed lonely and restless and his something eyes were evasive. However, for the first few days all went well. He opened in Hamlet with Lawrence Barrett as Laertes and in sprite of a bad cold played excellently and "to a house

The minute

overflowing," noted the Times, "with one of those peculiarly fashionable and intelligent audiences for which he seems to

wear such a talisman of attraction." Toward the end of the week his acting began to go to had it that when he was as he now pieces. Legend drinking, obviously was again, he suited his drunkenness to his role:
melancholy-drunk
for

got
for

Hamlet,

sentimentally

drunk

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

137

Othello, and savagely drunk for Richard III. His friends, with Mary in their minds, held a conference at the Stoddards', not

daring to appeal to him outright; something in the way he looked at them made this impossible. ^Notwithstanding the sweetness and simplicity of Mr. Booth's nature," said Lilian, "he carried always about him 'the divinity that doth hedge a
"

king/

Suddenly Booth discovered that wherever he went he had company. Either Aldrich or Launt Thompson or Stoddard stuck with him, not to be shaken off. The unspoken truth once when Booth and Aldrich, who was on flashed out only that evening, were in Booth's dressing room and the duty Negro valet sidled in carrying a tall glass of something brown. Booth snatched for it, but Aldrich got there first. He and Booth exchanged expressionless looks, then Aldrich threw open the window and emptied the glass into the alley. He followed Booth into the wing and waited until his scene was over. After they had left the theater and Booth began stepping out smartly in the opposite direction from where he was stayhim. They walked all night. ing, Aldrich was right behind Two spectral figures of a man and a boy may have walked

them in Booth's churning thoughts, at least. At daybreak he gave up as his father had done, and he and Aldrich stumbled back to his rented room where they fell into the same bed and slept until noon. When they woke up not a word was said of the strange night, nor did either of them ever refer to it to the other in the years to come.
beside

Early in Booth's second week John Wilkes, on his way from Boston to Philadelphia, swooped down on the Stoddards' apartment and found Edwin there. He came directly from Alary 's side and brought the news that she was ill with a feverish cold. Depressed by being alone so much, she had ventured into Boston to invite a friend back to stay with her. Heavy snow had begun to fall; the horsecar had been delayed and in waiting for it on the exposed street corner she had been chilled

138
through.
again."

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
At home

upstairs and put

me to bed.

at last she gasped to her maid: "Take me I feel as if I should never be warm

For the next two days she was ill and aching, but when John left she sent a note by him to say Edwin must not be anxious, must on no account break his engagement, and John
innocently seconded this by assuring his brother she seemed better: her eyes were bright and her cheeks red. That night or the next Booth got away from his chaperon and was so completely sodden when he made his entrance onstage that his friends in the house were faint with pity and embarrassment, and Elizabeth Stoddard took it on herself to let Mary know. "Sick or well," she wrote, "you must come. Mr. Booth has lost all restraint and hold on himself. Last night there was the grave question of ringing down the curtain before the performance was half over. Lose no time. Come." She had already notified Miss Lucy Pry in Boston of Booth's deterioration through the week. "I was not surprised," Miss Pry answered promptly. "I feared such would be the case when Edwin went without Mary . . and I am sorry to say that I have heard of it from outside sources. ... friend of mine told me yesterday that a lady friend of hers who had just returned from N.Y. saw him so intoxicated that he could not

much

walk and was being helped into a carriage." In the last day or so Lucy Pry had seen Mary, who was very low indeed. Her cold had developed into pneumonia and, already depleted and ill, she had no strength left to fight. "She is You never would know it was completely prostrated. . it seems to me that our Mollie has Mollie, gone and that we have someone else in her place she does not even look like herself." She seemed "perfectly indifferent" to everything about her and Miss Pry put it down to her utter weakness that she took no notice of any hints about Edwin. In New York Booth, lying awake with a spinning head at two in the morning, felt a puff of air blow cold on his right cheek, once, twice. Thoroughly startled, he rolled over in bed and felt the same on his left cheek, like the well-defined
.
.

pres-

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

ear: "Come to me, against his darling. Mrs. Miller, the doctor's wife, had chester house to wait on Mary. "It's a
all this

139

sure of cold lips, ghost kisses. Then distinctly he heard Mary's voice, smaller than in reality, but with the timbre of life, say

Fm almost frozen."

moved into the Dorshame you have to do

for me," Mary said faintly more than once. And Mrs. Miller answered, "It's a pleasure." She held her patient up in bed while with a hand so feeble she could hardly control it Mary slowly shaped her reply to Elizabeth's letter: "I cannot come. I cannot stand. I think sometimes that only a great calamity can save dear husband.
I

am going to try and write to him now, and God give me grace
The evening
of this day, Friday, February 20,

my

to write as a true wife should."

Mary

sud-

denly became so much worse that Dr. Miller called in another physician. Mary asked to be told the truth and was given it, that she had only a few hours to live. During the long two weeks of separation from her husband she had dwelt much in her dreams of the future when she would be strong again, and Edwin would be wholly himself. Now, in the face of a need so immense and inexorable that the effort came easily, she put the future away and begged only that the doctors try to keep her alive until Edwin could be with her, "so that I may tell
him." Dr. Miller sent a telegram to New York. "Seldom have we seen Shakespeare so murdered as at the Winter Garden during the past two weeks," clucked the New York Herald. "It would have been better to disappoint the public by closing the theater than to place Mr. Booth upon the
stage when he was really unfit to act." Booth was in his dressing room this night of February 20. accumulation of three telegrams from Dorchester lay on
his table, all

An

unopened. Stoddard was with him but Stoddard's guardianship had a chink in it somewhere because Booth's face was gray below its paint; he moved like a man under water, and when his scenes were called for Richard ///, he staggered out onto a rocking stage. The performance was just over when the

140

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

into the room with a torn-open envelope addressed to himself. He read it aloud: "This is the fourth does not Mr. Booth answer? He must come at telegram. once." The last train north had left. At the Stoddards' apartment Elizabeth brewed coffee over an alcohol lamp and gave Booth cup after cup until he was enough restored to pace die room as

manager hurried

Why

though

it

had bars around

it,

to halt and twist his hands, turn.

ing ghastly eyes on his hosts and monotonously appealing to them to reassure him that things were not so bad not the
.
.

worst? At seven in the morning he and Stoddard caught the first Boston train. Booth sent a telegram from the station: MARY, I'M COMING. Peering out of the train window he saw, not the railway yard with its shuttling cars, but a clear vision of his wife's face, unmistakable and yet unlike itself, with a white cloth molded around the head and chin. And as the train started and he turned repeatedly to the window, the quiet face

between him and the moving landscape. dawn the doctor's wife had called her husband, who had been lying down. Mary laid her head on Dr. Miller's shoulder. She was breathing quickly; her face was verp pale, her eyes were dark, and her long hair, falling loose, mingled with his white hair. It grew slowly brighter. Trie French nurse Marie slipped mutely into the room carrying Edwina, but Mary motioned her away. As the water in the bay lit up with the sunrise and the room filled with early-morning lignt, she sank back and died, the doctor her. gently
floated

Just before

releasing

It was a few minutes after seven when Mary died and Booth's train was gathering speed out of the York station. He made sure of this later, for it was then that he saw his wife's face, disembodied and floating beside him. For the second time, in a mysterious had comdistance, bridging of

New

municated with him. Something like this the Negroes had foretold when Booth was born. And twice, his mother swore to him, his father had appeared to her soon after death, to stand beside her bed and vanish before she could speak When the

physical

Mary

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

train pulled into the

141

Boston station and the helpful acquaintance who had brought his carriage to take Booth and Stoddard out to Dorchester walked somberly up to them, Booth raised his hand to ward off any talk and said only: "Don't tell me. I

know."

Not a word was spoken during the drive out. The small house looked the same except that the blinds were drawn in an upper window. Booth swung himself down from the carinside in three paces and up the stairs, hesitated outriage, was side the bedroom, then entered and shut the door, locking it. He stayed there all night with Mary's body, no one disturbing him. At dawn he emerged, and Stoddard, hovering by to offer any needed support, saw a strange thing: Booth held himself erect and his expression was actually exalted. In the room behe had slipped a rose between her folded hind him Mary lay; and hung has miniature on her breast. hands Services were held at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Caman endless, cold drive away along open roads. Stoddard bridge, was in the chapel, and so were Mrs. Howe and William Warren from the Boston Museum. Booth's mother was there. His brother John and his brother-in-law Clarke had traveled up together from Philadelphia, but Asia had not come; her resentment of Mary was like a splinter in her heart. "As Edwin Booth followed the casket," writes Mrs. Howe, "his eyes heavy with grief, I could not but remember how often I had seen him act the part of Hamlet at the stage burial of Ophelia. Beside or behind him walked a young man of remarkable beauty." This was John Wilkes. Mary's casket came to rest "hers was a most pathetic figure," Mrs. Howe recalled, "as she lay, serene and lovely, surrounded with flowers." Booth threw his long, theatrical cloak over his arm and
leaned against a pillar. The exaltation summoned up in him by the first night's prayers had been wiped away; he looked stunned. And as the clergyman Dr. Huntington began to
speak, a pain, like Booth's too sore and of the earth to be comforted by prayer, welled up in all the mourners.

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
III

While Mary's body lay in a vault at Mount Auburn, the house in Dorchester was still warm with her presence. Booth roamed through it upstairs and down. His mother, who had stayed on with him, heard him calling: "Mollie, Mollie!" The silent house gave back silence. Outside a carriage drove past without stopping. Inside a door opened and he started: it was
the servant.

He seized the pen Mary had held in her hand a week ago and wrote to Stoddard in New York: "What do they put
father planted a penny once, people into the ground for? to find a guinea in the Spring. It wouldn't work. expecting Would to God, Dick, that you and I could cultivate coffins." To Adam Badeau he wrote: "If, while I was happy, I failed to keep you advised of my whereabouts and doings, you see I think of you in my misery. Can you believe it, Ad? I can't." He sat listening to his half-drunken Irish cook spin out a story of two dreams she had had of him while he was away. Mary had suggested to her that those dreams meant a victory. "Yes, death's victory, was it not?" He stood staring out at the white-capped bay, remembering the plans they had laid for this winter for rides through the snow to jingling sleigh bells. "Ah! the ride, sad and solemn; the bells, joyless and dull; but they came the winter, the ride and the biells to make a deeper impression than we thought they would."

My

wrote to say he hoped Booth's art would console him. "The beauty of my art is gone," Booth answered. "It is hateful to me it has become a trade." And to Stoddard: "I wish to God, Dick, I was not an actor. Would to God I could write. It must be splendid! You don't think so? You'd swap with me, maybe, would you? Damn!

Damn! Damn!"
"I

am

as

calm outwardly," he assured Stoddard, "as though

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

a

143

wedding had taken place

instead of death

but, oh, the hell

within

me

is

intense!

My

grief eats

me!"

Had Mary not behavior while she lay suffering, she unworthy might have lived. From whom she had learned of it he not, but "had she had cheering news from me or of me/* he cried hopelessly to his two dear friends his and Mary's Dick and 'Lisbeth "it would have given her strength to rally. conduct hastened her death, when she heard that I her all was lost to all sense of decency and respect for her her
The
chief cause of his

agony was remorse.

learned of his

mew

My

feeble spirit sank." He climbed to the

hide them from sight.

books

lie all

bedroom to look over her things and "Her guitar is hanging on the wall. Her about me; her sewing, her dresses ... all weep

all talk of her. . . . Every little toy of hers, every little of paper the most worthless, are full of her because she scrap has touched them. They recall her more vividly than the baby . child should be a solace to me, but she, alas! does. . child. child can never fill her place, for she was my was my child, my baby-wife. . . Oh, Dick, only to think

for her,

My

My

Fve locked her up in a box and have the key of it; it doesn't seem as though she were in a coffin, does it?" He had not yet heard from a number of his friends, among them Fitzhugh Ludlow, and, surprisingly, the Woodman sisters "who pretended to be so full of Mollie. No matter, we all must go and be forgotten." Then Ludlow did write "a beautiful letter," and Lilian Woodman, in Boston for a visit, drove out to call. Several Boston friends with kind intentions invited Booth to dinner. "Are there not people in this world," he raved to Stoddard, "whose souls are formed of mud as well as their bodies?" Dismayed

by

they offered sympathy. "1 do They spoke of Mary, and he beto cry, "to make a fool of myself." Nothing they could gan say was the right thing. 4 What can they teU me? She is in heaven, and I must live
his strange

and

terrible look,

not need their sympathy!"

144

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
know all this at least as well as they know

to meet her there. I

it.

... They tell me that rime and use will soften the blow, that I shall grow to forget her. God forbid! My grief is sweet to me; for it is a part of her. ... I look back now to my youthful days when I lost my father, a father most dearly,
fondly loved!
look back without a tear, without a sigh, and it is difficult at this rime even to recall his features. Great God! Will this ever be the case with Mary?" The wind howled over the whitened fields. It was his fanat night tasy, he used to tell Mary when they clung together a storm, that the wind was the voice of some departed during soul screaming in agony for the sins of poor mortals left behind. "I dread to think of what I used to say there may be a voice in this wild music calling on me. "Why don't Mary come to me? Can she so soon have forgotten all our post? I have called on her, prayed to her have lain awake all night and strained my eyeballs in the darkness for I so base? Does she hate me her, but she gives me no sign. or does she fear to tell me she is unhappy? Oh, God! Could I but feel satisfied she is eternal! There is a damned unholy
I

Am

He sat up late, "more alone than Selkirk on his island," reading sad poetry while a storm raged outside. Something tapped on the glass of the window. He threw the window open and a small bird flew in past him. He was seized with a weird suspicion: half horror, half hope. But the waif ignored his coaxing and refused to nestle in his bosom. He ran after it, < while it beat from wall to wall then dropped exhausted. No, I don't think that Mary has yet, or ever wul to me, make herself manifest. I don't think I am worthy of it. ... I can't be good. I'm a fiend! I struggle upward as hard as I can but down I come plump into the sea of evil. I must drown there's no use
ae dreamed she stood before him and that as he knelt to implore her forgiveness, she turned her head away. This was

doubt keeps bubbling up in my boiling brain as to what we are. This dangling between the fiend and God is worse agony than to be damned outright. So weep for my early education?

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

How

145

many times in their life together had he not made justice. her weep most bitterly when "cold, indifferent, like a statue I received her deep devotion. . . . Although my love was deep-rooted in my soul yet I could never show it. ... If I were a poet I could tell you how I loved my bird, but as it is I can only say I loved and let you guess how deeply." Dr. Miller persuaded him to go out sleighing, hoping to divert him. It was a useless effort. The Howes met him with the doctor on the Brighton road. "Such an image of sorrow I have never seen," writes Florence Howe. "His long black hair seemed a fitting frame for the dark, melancholy face, as he sat huddled together in the cutter, his head sunk upon his
breast."

Wilson Barstow, who was Elizabeth Stoddard*s brother, on Booth and reported to his sister that he had found him "blue-chinned, unshaven," and smoking hard. Booth was
called

smoking twelve to fifteen cigars a day ("I can't stop; half an hour, or an hour at most, is as long as I can go without it"), but there was one thing he was not doing, and that was drinking.

"Having forsworn the fiend," he explained in a note to Dr. whom he was sending a leftover case of liquor, "I am anxious to rid my house of his presence will you aid me by taking him into pound thus bottled up and labelled TPorMiller, to
ter'?"

York had indirectly caused Mary's His drinking in death, that coupled with the officiousness of the "damned good-natured friends" their names unknown to him who
had been
at pains to tell her

New

about

it.

In a frenzy of

self-

reproach he laid bare to Elizabeth what he had long ago confessed to Mary: how he had been a drunkard before he was

had acquired
to have full

eighteen, a libertine at twenty. "All the accumulated vices I in the wilds of California and Australia seemed

I added fuel to the fire until the and made me, if not a mm, at least a little angel quenched worthier than I was. There was one spark, however, left untouched. It was merely covered and it occasionally would

sway over me.

it

146
ignite;
still

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
the angel kept
it

under.

dread

lest it

get full head-

way again."
Fll fight

He was heroically resolved that it should not. 'Til struggle

7'

conquer, too, with God's help. From this time on he would be a man dedicated. "Mollie's goodness was while here thrown away upon me. But it was not wasted, for now
I'll

I feel it,
life.

it ever will, my guiding star through have dared to ask God why I have been thus tortured, and now I feel a voice which tells me it was to save

now it shows as
I

...

me

to save her."

IV
Not until April was Mary buried. Booth drove over to Mount Auburn to choose a spot for her grave, "such a spot
as she would have chosen for me; near Gary, and overa valley, where the setting sun will kiss her goodlooking
I think

Then it was time to go,

up
in

to leave Dorchester.

The terror rose

world and

him once more

that in the excitement of the

Oh, Jesus! Spare me that!" But he had reached a turning point, and he could hardly wait to get back to New York, where the noise of the city would deaden even though he couldn't reason himself thought, out of the conviction that he would somehow meet Mary there. For even yet he could not "make her dead," nor could he believe that she had wholly stopped being, in the sense of a flame blown out. In his night watches he had tried earnestly to put himself into direct communication with her, had waited breathlessly, listened intently. "But there is yet some impediment between us," he told Elizabeth, "which prevents her from doing what I know she will do some day."

not entirely, for that but to be borne along by time into a misty recolimpossible, lection of something that has passed away; to turn the mouldy leaves of memory until suddenly remembering (with scarce a sigh, perhaps) a dream of happiness I had when I was young.
is

his profession, soon to be renewed, he her, might "live so long as to forget

might stop thinking of

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

New

147

He had an appointment in New York with Laura Edmonds,

the spiritualist and daughter of John Worth Edmonds, a forYork Court of Appeals. Lately the War mer judge of the had sent thousands of people drifting to the seance chambers
in desolate, last-ditch attempts to deny the utter blotting out of sons or lovers killed in battle. Like them Booth pinned his

hopes

"Oh, for the day with Edmonds! I shall tire her death but since I go to her in faith and for a holy purpose to I feel sure she will assist me." By May he was settled in New York with Edwina and his mother in a house on East Seventeenth Street rented from Putnam, the publisher. He had had his hair cut and he shaved regularly. The solitary vigils, the moon-bleached fields of Dorchester, the homely little rooms that spoke so agonizingly of Mary's presence fell back into the past. All about him the great aty murmured. Yet "as I ever have lived," he wrote to Adam Badeau, "so live I now, within." His work was soon to begin; his mind was pulled in a dozen directions. Still he sat on, and wrote on steadily. "Believe in one great truth, Ad. God is. And as surely as you and I are flesh and bones and blood, so are we also spirits eternal." The next day, May 19, was Mary's birthday, her twentythird if she had lived. Booth chose this day for his first visit to Laura Edmonds. He walked out from the interview with his mind whirling, shaken and ecstatic. "I feel a load lifted from my heart," he exulted to Dick and Elizabeth. "Oh, how beautiful, how good is my angel wife! Oh! how I love her! My soul

on the

occult.

yearns
to

me

but not painfully for her. I feel she is nearer dearer than she could ever be on earth; she told me beautiful

things yesterday many things I longed to hear. Every soul will Wednesday we are to meet every Wednesday become freer and happier. Yesterday seems like a world of I long for itself apart from all time & all mine. Oh, how

my

"

Wednesday!

The Wednesday came and others after it, but with each one
Booth's ecstasy subsided a degree and his mind was more torn. He complained to Badeau that "the result of my four or five

148

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

I can visits is not get on earth satisfactory; of course nothing can be. ... I sometimes believe beyond a doubt of her existence and her constant love; but then again I feel the deadness of an outcast soul." He had read in the Herald that Badeau had been wounded, and the news suggested an awesome possibility. "My dear Ad., we may never meet again; you may even now be quitting . . earth for the bright home I have longed for. Ad., if you the reality of what do go, come back to me, and assure me of
.

perplexes us

all

so often."

Most people who cared for him were displeased and worried \yy the new line he was taking. Elizabeth Stoddard had some time ago urged him austerely to "cultivate the intellectual," and he had answered piteously that this was "impossible
for him."

He refused to give up hope. "I won't believe for the millionth part of a minute that Mary's deep love for me is buried in her grave; and living and loving still, why should she not seek me
even yet?" But his remarkable plea to Badeau was made in confidence. "Keep it to your heart," he wrote. And of the stances: "I may as well tell you, some marvelous tilings have been said and done. . father and Mary have both been with me My there, and have written and spoken with me through Miss E in a curious manner . almost convincing . but we cannot help our doubts, you know. ... I want something beyond a doubt. ... So if you remain on earth I'll acquaint you witk my proceedings; if you go to her and can come back,
. . . . .
.

do

so; I will, to

you."

Slowly Booth gathered up the threads he had dropped. There were still some places he could not bear to go; the Fifth Avenue Hotel was one. Even now his mind couldn't let alone the same, worst, sore spot, which seemed never to heal. "Had the hateful knowledge of my conduct been kept from Mary, I should feel more and patient, but the consciousness of quiet

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

149

my baseness and the agony it caused her is a curse that will ever

weigh upon me God forgive us all!" This was to Stoddard. Not long after this the blow fell. Lilian Woodman believed what happened was that Booth discovered the letter from Elizabeth telling of his being drunk, which Mary had tried to answer the day before she died. Whether he discovered it or not, he learned who had been the informant, and whenever someone had wronged Booth or had hurt one he loved, no excuses could excuse, no reasons could explain the inAfter the first shock he would blaze with the awful anger jury. of pure disillusionment. Perhaps he expected too much from his friends, but when any of them proved themselves to be less worthy than he had thought them, they simply ceased to
exist for hum.

He was

through with both the Stoddards.

The cruel letter Booth had learned of, written by a friend he trusted, had not been a friend's letter. Yet now mysteriously,
him from a indeed a friend. Booth had opened again at stranger who was the Winter Garden on September 21. "I no longer Feel an interest in acting," he had told Dick Stoddard before their I valued in the breakup. "There was but one whose opinion
as if to restore his faith in his kind, a letter reached
least."

the mysterious letter was delivered to him. "My dear Mr. Booth," it began, "it is because I do know that you mourn your wife truly, I appeal to her memory now as the surest to win your attention to what I have to say, and now that spell her voice is silenced, and her loving spirit has passed away, to speak to you as she might have done about yourself." The letter, which was unsigned, had been written by a man, wife had admiringly evidently a New Yorker, who with his followed Booth's career up to Mary's death. Booth was a. with romantic interest public figure, and his audiences hung on every detail of his private life. Hundreds of people had been glad with him at Edwina's birth, had regretted his drinking, felt sorrow at his loss, and unknown to him, had discussed among themselves what he ought to do next. The anonymous

Then

150

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

writer had noticed that since Booth's return to the stage his voice, affected by too much smoking, could hardly be heard even in this small house; that his breathing was oppressed and

he looked gray and

ill.

The

letter continued, like

life

a quiet voice.
. .

"You
.

are reckless,

This is not as it and health, you say. You have a motive for every act of self denial, a should be! prompter for every high and noble aspiration, which should make you rise superior to all selfish considerations. Another life
is

and heedless of

bound up
.
.

in yours

a sacred trust has devolved

upon you

alone.

and determine to

"Can you not rouse yourself to a sense of your responsibility, fight life's battle with renewed courage for

the sake of the helpless girl entrusted to you? . . . determine to preserve for her the support and protection which a father's arm alone can afford, and to devote yourself to the culture,

and elevating for another life, the immortal soul you hold within your influence for good or evil? This is worth living for. . . And now for the advice." The stranger urged Booth to smoke less and to give up drinking strong coffee. "Seek good medical advice and have done with quacks. . Come out of your memories and combat your despondency. Believe me, you have many and warm
. . .

friends."

At the foot of the page was written: "Be good enough to burn this letter as soon as you read it." But Booth laid the letter carefully away after noting on it:
"It
is

He had said of little Edwina that she

prattles day long to me; but still she loved and cherished so devotedly."
all

too precious to burn."

is

"climbs my knee, and not the baby I have

Florence

Howe

writes that

"it

was

pitiful to see

him with
Mary's

his little motherless child."

Once immediately

after

death he had seized his daughter in his arms and raked her face with hungry eyes, yet when a likeness to her mother seemed to peep out at him he had burst into such a flood of
tears that

when

his eyes cleared the

resemblance was gone.

THE PALACE OF NIGHT

he accepted
take place
it.

151

And inevitably, as what he dreaded began to the vivid image of the person he had most loved imperceptibly effaced itself his power of loving and hopes for the future fixed on a new object. Edwina needed him, and this, as the wise stranger had shown, this was "worth living for." He bought his own house this fall, on East Nineteenth Street, where his mother and Rosalie could live with him and look after Edwina, who was not quite two. "All hopes and now are clustering like a halo about her head," her aspirations father cried. "She is the light of my darkened life." More and more he saw in her a likeness to Mary. "Full of her sweet mother's soul, she brings Mary back to earth; her her ringing laugh bear me backward in eyes, voice, manner, to the days when I first knew her mother." pleasurable pain
as

Now months had passed. He was growing used to his loss;

my

PART FOUR

CHAPTER

Suit of Sables
Hamlet, Act
/,

I have that within 'which passeth show.

scene 2

DURING
girl she

the past

Philadelphia*

They were

summer Booth had seen Asia in friends again. With the

hated six months dead, Asia's feud with her brother had worn itself out. Years later in a little book she published about Edwin she went so far as to speak of Mary Devlin as "a good woman" a modest enough tribute compared to the praises others had heaped on Mary, yet from a woman of Asia's curious nature, possessive, bel-

and ingrown, it meant a great deal. John Wilkes occasionally stayed with Booth in New York, flashing in from Boston or New Orleans. As an actor, he had a pass across the battle lines and traveled freely between North and South, being recognized everywhere by his picturesque overcoat with its astrakhan collar, deep sleeves, and flowing cape; his broad hat worn low and on the bias; and his jet-black mustache. In the spring he had been arrested in St. Louis for saying he "wished the whole damn government would go to hell." He was set free after swearing allegiance to the Union and paying a fine.
ligerent,
155

156

Badeau, after weeks spent in hospital, was brought to Edwin's for his convalescence. Edwin and John carried bun upnursed him in shifts. Badeau stairs, dressed his wound and was "very captivating, though not so disthought John

PRINCE OF PLAYERS when the wounded John had been in New York this summer

Adam

his greater brother." tinguished as

And, "imagine me," said John afterward, laughing grimly rebel sinews. to Asia, "helping that wounded Yankee with Edwin's house. . . . If it weren't for mother I wouldn't enter

my

If the

North conquer

us, it will

be by numbers only, not by

native grit, not pluck, and not by devotion." Asia exclaimed: *7f the North conquer us?

We are

of the

North."

"Not I, not
life

I!" cried John.

"So help me holy God!

my soul,

and possessions

are for the South!"

When, after his own daughter's death, the great Macready returned to playing the part of the grief-stricken father Virhe recognized in his acting a tragic authority it had ginius,
never had before. Booth had demanded of Badeau in the fullness of sorrow:

"Do you think now it is possible for me to recite some passages

in a play without a
as the

At first his new insight nearly made him break down onstage
case

something in my heart and throat?"

of Shakespeare's lines to his poignant application of some came home to him. Then as his grief became more manageable, his technique absorbed it, and by degrees the work that had seemed empty to him after Mary's death began to engross him completely. Strange how each night the play became a fresh creation, a tale never told before! He was not drinking. When people jocosely condoled with "* him about this he would say: "I dare not, I dare not, I dare not! that He smoked hard instead, and drank black coffee. he was no longer wasting himself he could give his profession the best that was in him. He would make his acting a monument to Mary. He began to appreciate the moral value of his art. "Whatever I may do of serious import," he wrote ta

own

Now

A
Gary's
I

SUIT OF SABLES
"I regard
is

157

young widow,
all

it as

duty owe to

that

pure and honest

a performance of a sacred in my nature a duty

to the very religion of

His main opposition in

my heart." New York this autumn of

1863 was

Edwin Forrest, laboring again at Niblo's. When Forrest played or Metamora he could still pack the house, with Spartacus on campstools in the aisles, but when he tried people sitting

Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, his audiences declined. York had a new Hamlet now, and Forrest had not one but two Booths against him, as was shown earlier in the year when he

New

and John Wilkes were both acting in Philadelphia and John deliberately scheduled Macbeth for the same night as Forrest and drew a bigger house. His season in New York over, Edwin Booth took to the road, and in Washington Secretary of State Seward gave a dinner for him, and President Lincoln saw him act Shylock at Ford's Theater on Tenth Street. "A good performance," said the sad-faced President in his oddly soft voice, "but Fd a thousand times rather read it at home if it were not for Booth's
playing."

Lincoln often escaped to the theater, having arranged with Washington managers that he should enter unobtrusively by a side door. He had been warned he was foolhardy to go without guards, such rashness was uncalled for. "The fact is, I am a great coward," Lincoln had replied. "I have moral courage enough, I think, but I am such a coward physically that if I were to shoulder a gun and go into action, I am dead sure that I know I should." I should turn and run at the first fire He was not the only one. "If it were not for the fear of doing my country more harm than good," Booth admitted to Badeau, "Fd be a soldier too; a coward always has an 'if to
slink behind,

you know. Those cursed

at times;

bullets are

awkward

things, don't hesitate to

and very uncivil

avow

be nothing to the run I'd make of it." March, 1864, Booth was acting in New York again, and By he offered a new melodrama, a real tear-jerker called The
chance. Bull

Run would

my

bayonet charge, I readiness to 'scoot' if there is a

and

as for a

158

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

FooFs Revenge, based on the same story as the opera Rigoletto. Booth played Bertuccio, the hunchbacked court jester who, not knowing what he does, helps kidnap his own daughter and "*" hand her over to a libertine. Then he learns his r
BERTUCCIO. (With a wild cry.) murdered! DELL' AQUILA. Ha! by whom? BERTUCCIO. (Wildly.) By me!
father!
It

My child! My child! wronged!

by me! Her
father

her

own

was a huge hit.

n
year had slipped by since Mary died. There was a change in Booth, and he could see it. The great lesson he had learned from Mary's death was that of submission. "Nothing but the

blow which fell could have awakened me. I learned to feel it was in kindness, not anger, that God spoke thus to me." For the first time since the days when he took care of his
he thought of others, not of himself. When Gary had killed, Booth was shocked and saddened, yet it was a thing apart from him. When Badeau was wounded, Booth thought of his own need first. Now early in the summer of 1864 Mrs. Cornelius Felton, who was Gary's older sister and had been like a second mother to Booth and Mary, died in Cambridge, and this time Booth's sympathy flowed not only from his knowledge of sorrow; he had got beyond sorrow to an understanding of what true consolation is. "Oh, that I could give you," he wrote to her family, "the full companionship of Uod's love as I have felt it since Mary's death, the peace that has filled my soul, and the strength that has flowed steadily into it since that terrible day. Oh, be assured, dear, dear ones, that they are together. They never forget us, never cease to love and care for us. Oh, I feel such an intense love for God when sorrow touches me that I could almost wish my heart would always ache I feel so near to him* . . . How distinctly I can see Richard and Mrs. Felton
father,

been

A SUIT OF
in

SABLES

159

much more so than I see Mary. Isn't it strange? I see her, though,
Edwina."

Edwina was almost three. Just as Booth's earliest memory was of his father's small, hard hands swinging him terrifyingly down from horseback through the woodland, dipped in darkness, so one of Edwina's first memories was of being cradled in her father's arms and laid back softly in her crib from the nurshad found her when he arrived home ery floor, where Booth

after the theater.

The

"Your foot

elder Booth's voice rang through his son's childhood. is on your native heath!" shouted Junius, and no

forest goblin dared dispute him. But when Edwina remembered her young father's voice, as she did later, it was as a musi-

Often she sat on his lap while with one arm clasped her in a gesture divinely protective he recited poetry around a verse by Tennyson:
cal caress.

What

does little birdie say In her nest at peep of day?

And his tone was so sad and the words as he said them so full of
pathos that the child pressed her face into his shoulder and burst into tears.

Edwina was her

mother once had been. She

father's "birdie," his "little bird," as her realized dimly that he was not like

other parents. To begin with, there was only one of him, whereas other children had a mother as well. And so did she, he reminded her earnestly, looking at her with eyes that seemed to enter her. She had a mother who was waiting for them both

But to Edwina, seeing was believing; she knew her Young though she was, she sensed his sadness, and it was her father's solitude, not her own, that seemed to her forlorn and unnatural. He could be with her only in the short, he frolicked with darkening hour before his early dinner. Then
in heaven.
father.

her,

very gently. "Far-r-ther, don't go," she trilled at

him

as

he

left for

the

theater.

l6o

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

"Birdie, it's to bring you bread and butter." "I don't want any bread and butter."

returned at midnight, to watch his darling from the lighted door or to stand by her crib.

He

"Go to

sleep,
is

baby."

"Far-r-ther

my baby," she told him.

Junius Booth had traveled East again, holding by the hand Marion, his and Harriet Mace's daughter. Poor Hattie had died in California, and Junius had left her pretty under a tombstone which bore a marble figure, her name, age, the date of her death, and the words, DON'T CRY. Edwin had helped Junius with money before. This time he gave him a good business position connected with the Winter Garden. Booth and his brother-in-law Clarke had taken the bold step of leasing the Winter Garden to pky there under their own management for several seasons to come. As a third partner they had signed on a plausible person who called himself William Stuart, though nis real name, which he had reasons for dropping, was O'Flaherty. He was the writer who for pay had systematically written down Forrest in the Tribune and made him a laughingstock. Stuart was not a wise choice for a partner, the truth was not in him. But Booth and Clarke hadn't yet scratched below the surface of his Irish charm and they installed him as house manager at a large salary. Booth's home was the perch for all three of his brothers whenever they were in York, but he had had absolutely to forbid any talk about the War when John was staying with him. John had championed the South and coarsely cursed "old
his little girl

New

Abe" until Edwin finally you feel so strongly?"

"I promised

blurted:

"Why

don't

you

fight if

Mother to keep out of the

I

quarrel," retorted

John, "and I'm sorry

was more frank with Asia in Philadelphia when she taunted him that "every Marylander worthy the name is fighting the South's battles." After a scorching silence he answered painfully: "I have

He

promised."

A SUIT OF SABLES

l6l

brains are worth twenty men, my only an arm to give. worth a hundred, my beloved, precious money Oh, money never beloved till now!" He might have added that his flattering eyes were worth a that his voice, intimate and coaxing, ought to be regiment, valued at a division. Observing, as he put it, "how women rule the Nation," he had begun to ingratiate himself with ladies in

My

the highest circles, especially the government circle in Washattentiveness was one of his charms. Having started ington. His
his fair friends talking, he lowered his disturbing gaze and smiled as he listened, like the sultan at Scheherazade's voice. John was forever and feverishly on the move these days,

though, strangely enough, not acting much. Often he turned up at Asia's house plastered with red mud and occasionally so
late that

he

let

himself in with his

on the couch downstairs

still

own key and tumbled asleep in his clothes and riding boots. He

detested Clarke

"I'd never darken his door but for you,

Asia."

Early in the War when he and Clarke had been on a train together and Clarke had sneered at Jefferson Davis, John hurled himself on his brother-in-law, almost throttling him, and yelled:

"Never again if you value your life speak to me so of a man " and a cause I hold sacred! Yet he was freer in this house than in Edwin's because Clarke was usually on the road, and Ask kept her questions to herself. She had them, however. Night after night when John was with her she would hear a soft tap at the front door, then the unmistakable creak as he opened the door and then guarded voices, one or two of which she thought she recognized, but when she called down there would be no answer. Edwin followed the war news that inflamed his brother with only a part of his mind. The bloody battles Chickamauga, Chattanooga, The Wilderness in which soldiers of both sides,
each man to himself vividly central, gave their lives for a yard of ground, might have been fought out on the plateaus of the moon for all they affected a busy actor. Parke Godwin of the Evening Post stopped in to see Booth one day at noon and

162

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

found him stretched on a sofa breathing like a runner and covered with sweat. "Not ill, I hope?" Godwin asked. "No," said Booth, "it's this abominable speech. I've been practicing it all morning. I've shouted it and screeched it and roared it and mumbled it and whispered it, but it won't come
right."

That night Godwin heard the speech

tically applauded. Booth was his own

onstage, heard

it

fran-

producer, too, now, since he and Clarke had taken the Winter Garden, and he meant to do nothing but the great plays, to do them as they should be done perfectly. He spent most of the hot summer of 1 864 in the wardrobe room and scene shop of the theater poring over designs for new sets and costumes to be shown off during his first season in this house as part proprietor. In September he acted for two weeks in Philadelphia, rushing to New York and back over the week end. The pace was fearful, too much for any man, "bodily, " mental and spiritual 'hammer and tongs/ he complained to

Mrs. Gary in a letter. He was not quite thirty-one, and for the first time in his life his body went back on him. In New York again, worn out by his elaborate preparations for a season that hadn't yet opened, he was first crippled by neuralgia, having to sit up straight with his leg in a sling, and then laid low by a series of such blasting nervous headaches that the slightest noise seemed to split his head open.

Federal

siege of Petersburg.

army under General Grant was "Oh, God! give me leave to

night.

pressing the see the end!"

dis-

John sighed to Asia one

traught.

He

looked haggard and

Asia begged him: "Don't go South again, my poor brother. Don't go." "Why, where should I go, then?" he demanded and glaring at her with half mad, half somber eyes, began to sing a parody of a popular song in which each verse ended on a rhyme to
a year.

A SUIT OF SABLES
"In 1865

163

when Lincoln

shall

be long!"

John sang. Asia shook her head violently. "Oh, not that. That will never happen." John leaped to his feet. "No, by God's mercy! Never that!" he cried. Then he whispered savagely, his tormented face close
to hers: "This man's appearance, bis pedigree, his coarse low and anecdotes, his vulgar similes and his frivolity are a jokes to the seat he holds. ... He is walking in the footdisgrace of old John Brown, but no more fit to stand with that prints

the greatest character of this century. He is Bonainspired, in one great move, that is, by overturning this blind Reparte himself a king. This man's re-election which public and making " will be a reign! will follow his success, I tell you On November 25 Edwin gave Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden for one gala night only. The profits were to swell the fund for a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, New York's new pleasure ground, which had been a wilderness three years
before. Junius
first

rugged old hero

Great God! No! John Brown was a man

time they had

publicity,

and John were in the cast with him. This was the all pkyed together, and Stuart, in charge of made the most of it by advertising
OF THE GREAT BOOTH

THE THREE SONS JUNIUS BRUTUS,

EDWIN
Filii

AND

JOHN WILKES
Patri

Digno Digniores
theater that

There was already a saying in the

Edwin Booth

ruled the East, Junius Brutus, Jr., John Wilkes the South. Since Stuart had taken over publicity at the Winter Garden he had devoted himself to promoting Edwin in a flock of leaflets, and even statuettes (suitable for
the West, and
posters,

drawing-room tables) distributed through the whole city, so that the name Booth alone, in New York at any rate, had come

164

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

to mean Edwin, and "Booth-like" was an accepted synonym for dark, handsome, and melancholy. However, now that Junius had established himself in New York, the papers occa"so I must brush up or lose my sionally called him the Booth,
laurels," said

Edwin.

eyeing his brother's success, "Ted has the public, and they're running wild over him. Yet let him got act for a thousand years and he never will be able to approach

"Ah,"

said Junius,

father."
It was John who felt really diminished by Edwin. John was no longer a schoolboy and yet his dream was still to overthrow the Colossus "I must have fame, fame." The unspoken rivalry between him and Edwin was exploited by managers. When he played in Washington the management billed him not only as the "Son of the Great Junius" but as the "Brother

Edwin Booth." The Southern press natunotice of his Richard III in New Orfavored John. rally leans boasted that "in physique Mr. Booth is greatly the superior of his brother Edwin, being a much handsomer and larger man, and in no other particular . . . is he at all inferior
and
Artistic Rival of

to that much-admired actor."

Because JuKus Caesar was given as a benefit, all prices were and the best seats sold for five dollars. It was worth the money to see the three Booths outdo themselves, each at the top of his form: Edwin as Brutus, Junius as Cassius, which had been their father's part, and John as Mark Antony. "Edwin was nervous," Asia noticed* "I think he trembled a little for his
raised

own

laurels."

Asia was standing downstairs while her mother and Rosalie sat in a box at the side. As the band struck up and the brothers made their entrance in Caesar's train the ovation rocked the house. When the act was over they stood in line before the curtain, bareheaded, wearing white togas and sandals, and bowed to the audience and to one another. Junius, sturdily built for the lean Cassius, looked the most like his father, though

he was taller and heavier. The jutting jaw, bold carriage of the head, and air of domination all were uie same, but the electric

-lit

!S

A SUIT OF SABLES

165

fire that had seemed to zigzag like forked lightning from the eyes of the elder Booth was missing from the eyes of Junius.

fragile between his brothers. His thoughtful roamed over the house. He seemed to illustrate Brutus' eyes words about himself:
I

Edwin looked

am

not gamesome:
off his

Of

that quick spirit that

do lack some part is in Antony.

John had shaved

eyes sparkled for him and he knew it. He threw back his head, set beautifully on his neck, and his moist lips parted, his teeth glinted, as he laughed his acknowledgments. Asia, listening eagerly to the while they compared the brothers, heard people around her somebody exclaim: "Oz/r Wilkes looks like a young god!" She turned to see a man whom she recognized for a Southerner the demonstration rolled on staring like one hypnotized. As unchecked, old Mrs. Booth sat beaming down at her sons who made a special bow to her and at their father in them.

like black

mustache for the performance. His diamonds. Most of the applause was

This was worth 'everything.

his

audience was engrossed in the picture of Brutus pacing shadowy orchard just before the Roman dawn broke when a screech and a roar in the street outside jolted everyone back to New York. Several fire engines clattered to a halt in front of the theater, and three or four firemen burst into the lobby. There was a mutter of panic through the house. Brutus stepped commanded silence with a look, quickly to the footlights, and in the low voice of most of Booth's curtain speeches announced there was nothing to be alarmed at. The noise died down and the play went on. But next morning the papers the Winter Garden (the explained that the fire endangering actual blaze had been next door in the Lafarge House) was one of a dozen or so, deliberately set in public buildings all in a co-ordinated plot of the Rebels to demoralize over the

The

New York.
At
political

city

breakfast

Street one of the forbidden broke out. Junius blustered that in Caliarguments

on Nineteenth

66

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
men who set those fires would have been strung up.
said firmly that a
his life,

fornia the

Edwin

time in

few days earlier, voting for the first he had voted for Lincoln's re-election; and at this John began to rave that his brother knew not what he had done, that he would live to see Lincoln the king of America.
Ill

Booth opened in Hamlet, night after Julius Caesar the perfect productions he had been which was the first of

The

on all summer. Stuart predicted it was so run six months. Booth, more conservative, gave good it would it about four weeks, but the four weeks stretched into six, then
lovingly working
record.

Evidently this Hamlet was going to set a For Shakespeare a run of three weeks was very fair and to pass the twelve-week mark was extraordinary. Stuart was walking on the clouds, but Booth, who had to carry the show and Stuart and the Winter Garden and everything else on his own back, was almost dropping under the strain of "this terrible success." Never in his life had he played
eight, ten, twelve.

a part so long.

One

night onstage he reached a dead stick,

was prompted and forgot again, was prompted and forgot still again and at last signaled the stage manager to lower the curtain.

After this he urged Stuart desperately to agree to a change

Stuart shook his head until
his fist.

it wobbled and smacked "Dear bhoy, keep it up, keep it up. If k runs a year, keep it up, keep it up!" The monumental scenery of the new Hamlet and the rich stuffs and colors green, gold, crimson, violet of the cos-

of

bill.

his

palm with

tumes, contributing to the beauty of the spectacle, helped to

make it go. But what, after all, gave it its siren-lure was Booth's peculiar fitness for the main part. From his first entrance upstage left every eye was riveted on that forward-drifting, small, lithe, elegant, saffron-faced figure in shabby black with the dark hair hanging to the shoulders. Booth looked more
Italian than Danish, but anyone reminded of this in the moment of watching him would have brushed the suggestion away as of no account while waiting impatiently for him to

ASUITOFSABLES

167

first of the famous soliloquies that to both star and begin the audience were like operatic arias, each a test of quality in the

performer. Left alone, Booth roved from side to side.

God!

God!

How
Seem

weary,
to

stale,

flat,

me

and unprofitable

all

the uses of this world.

the midnight battlements, more native to him than the chamber, Hamlet stood apart from his friends and questioned the air with rolling glances. He seemed a figure created few years by the night: shadowy, fantastic, moonstruck. before, Booth had sometimes worked himself up so in this scene that he was incoherent, but since then he had learned restraint. His acting had a quiet ease now, an intensity of emotion without rant; yet breaking every so often into what seemed a spontaneous explosion of tragic power, as when he commanded Horatio and Marcellus to swear by his sword they standing resolutely on either side of him while he held the crossed hilt high, his head thrown back, his face dazzling and impassioned under the calcium flare:
castle

On

Never to speak of this Swear by my sword. Never to speak of this Swear by my sword.

that

you have

seen,

that

you have
suicide

heard,

sitting his hand, his solitariness intensified footlights, his chin in

Booth gave the great speech on

near the by the

stage. The to a sensitive listener suggested such depth of feelslight, yet touch more would have been unbearably ing, that the least

sweep of the empty

touches of emotion were so

crude.

He began almost in a whisper:

To
be, or not to be.

The audience sat rapt, its thousand faces as immovable in the

half-light as a painted backdrop;
its

thousand minds

alert,

l68
while the

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

six words on which the actor had lavished as many weeks of labor seemed to be spoken not to but within each separate consciousness, as though each man and woman in that

worldly place heard his own thoughts speak. Booth was usually a bad stage lover; however, Hamlet's scene with Ophelia is renunciation rather than straight lovemaking and into the line
I

did love thee once

he poured so much poetry and tenderness that half his audience heaved an envious sigh. "You felt," mused Mrs. John Sherwood, "that Ophelia was a that if she had been grander, nobler, and more poor creature; or a woman, the play need never have been written." After his biting dismissal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,
. .
.

though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me,

sailed

Booth flung away the recorder with so much fierce energy it up into the flies. Then Polonius entered, and another
the feminine half, Lucia Calhoun, considered his to the obsequious old man, greeting

member of

God

bless

you,

sir!

was one of his finest single lines "such utter weariness, such scorn of this miserable, dishonest, luxurious court; such despair of a noble nature set upon by ignoble natures; such impatience of this last crafty, unscrupulous, lying courtier, that the grace of speech is more bitter than a curse." It was the awful quiet of his reproach to the Queen
Mother, you have
that indicted

when he

or loud; addressed the Ghost of his father his voice quivered with love, and when the Ghost ordered,
Speak to
her,

my father much offended and terrified. He was never brutal

Hamlet,

he put his arm around the shuddering woman. In the macabre pkce of burial Hamlet stood

contemplating

A SUIT OF SABLES

1 69

the jester's skull. Said the actor Otis Skinner: "Booth's 'Alas, was the most melodious thing of the age. He poor Yorick/ ' breathed the word Yorick,' but did not speak it. The audience

knew what he was saying, and the effect of his reading was tremendous." In a voice that had already something of the detachment of the dying, Booth gave the lines that were his favorite in Shakespeare.
If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

He was fire and elegance as he fenced with Laertes. He was

a dashing, expert fencer and West Pointers in front sat on the edge of their seats and nodded approvingly. The match ended; the character of the scene changed. Hamlet, wounded to death and turning convulsively in Horatio's arms, breathed his last words in tones that the actor, who as an actor was now wholly forgotten by his audience, deliberately invested with sublime
pathos.

O!

I die,

Horatio;

The

potent poison quite o'er-crows

.
.

The rest is silence.

my

spirit.

the silence in front continued after the curtain had even applause until the orchestra glided down. There was not struck up the "Dead March" from Saul and snapped the charm.

And

Booth never

lost

the

name he made

this season.

"The fashion and the passion, especially among women," York critic who signed himself "Nym was how the Crinkle" described Booth's Hamlet. it "a The Times part in which he has no living

New

pronounced

equal."

'What Garrick was in Richard HI or Edmund Kean in the Shylock, we are sure Edwin Booth is in Hamlet," suggested
editor of

"The Easy Chair" of Harper's

for April, 1865.

170

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
.

"Booth is altogether princely. His playing throughout has an exquisite tone, like an old picture. The cumulative sadness of the play was never so palpable as in his acting." "Edwin Booth's Hamlet/' writes William Winter, "was
*
.
. .
.

the simple, absolute realization of Shakespeare's haunted prince, and raised no question and left no room for inquiry whether the Danes in the Middle Ages wore velvet robes or had long
flaxen hair. It

was dark, mysterious, afflicted, melancholy." the keenest comment came from John Wilkes who Possibly thought much the same as Winter. John could be generous in

and when at rehearsal one day some actors were well-known Hamlets with him, including his own, discussing "No, no, no!" insisted John, "there's but one Hamlet to my mind; that's my brother Edwin. You see, between ourselves, he is Hamlet melancholy and all."
spite of rivalry

IV
Booth was engaged to be married again, and he explained it was for Edwina's sake. The young woman was a Miss Blanch Hanel of Philadelphia; they planned to be married in the summer. Yet his allegiance and preoccupation remained
that

unchanged, very strangely so for a man recently engaged. He kept Mary's books and belongings intimately about him and he wrote to Mrs. Gary: "I feel that all my actions have been and are influenced by her whose love is to me the strength and the wisdom of my spirit." And again: "Do you think the freed spirit loses all interest in

He meant Mary and his friend Richard. Did they not rejoice
together in heaven to see his improvement in his noble art? "I think they do." He felt mystically, literally, guided from above. "I cannot but believe" this was to Emma help Gary, Richard's sister "that there is a sufficient in

importance

Mary and Richard still; that to a higher influence than the world believes I am moved by I owe the success
I

art to interest

my

have achieved."

Acting every night, he was busy

all

day mounting a mag-

A SUIT OF SABLES
nificent Richelieu to be on a level with his production of Hamlet, whose record ran lasted just a hundred nights. All New York was proud, and a committee, which included Governor Hoffman, planned to present Booth with a fancy gold medal on the hundredth night, March 22, 1865. But when the date came the medal wasn't finished. Tiffany the jeweler was still working on it, and the presentation had to be post-

poned.
tribute. Junius admitted that while their father "could make the cold shivers crawl down my back, he couldn't possibly have played Hamlet

Another of Booth's brothers paid him a wry

as

has done for one hundred consecutive performances done it well." and It was sometime in February or March this year, so says Adam Badeau, that Booth, on his way to Philadelphia late one was waiting on the railway platform in Jersey City on night,

Edwin

the fringe of a crowd of passengers all buying sleeping-car space from the conductor, when he saw a tall young man, crowd up against the car body, lose his footing pressed by the as the train began to move and fall into the gap between the wheels and platform. Booth dropped his valise, stuck his ticket between his teeth, and striding forward, caught the helpless man by the coat collar and hauled him back up. The young stranger, who recognized the actor from his photograph, panted gratefully: "That was a narrow escape, Mr. Booth." It was Robert Lincoln, son of the President. York for Boston near the end of March. He Booth left had expected to take Edwina, but when the time came his mother warned him against exposing the child to the bleak

New

winds off the Boston fens, and Booth was twice warned after So Edwina went to losing Mary from a fatal chill in Boston. he knew in advance how much stay with her Aunt Asia, though he was bound to miss her. While he was there he would visit Mount Auburn, though not Dorchester. "It would kill me almost to visit Dorchester, and yet I can go to Mary's grave." He was happier now than he had been. He had the comfort of his bride-to-be ("sent in answer to dear Mary's prayers,

172
I

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
believe.

faithfully

and died in doing"), had found himself at last

She will do what Mary struggled, suffered, even than this, he and more
important
in his

profession.

Convinced that

his

work
of

exerted an influence for

little

good
I

my

world (the theater)

really

begin,"

"even beyond the range he wrote to Emma

Gary,

"to feel

happy

in

my

once uneasy of sphere

action."

was a profound and hard-won change. "I believe my of that is shown more in the in appreciation growth spirit which God sent me here to do, than in aught else that I have
It

experienced
In the

in

my life."
world the terrible War showed signs of
could not hold out being
beaten to
ending,

larger

Besieged Petersburg

much

longer.
still

The

Confederate
heroic,

Army was

its

knees,

dealing

strokes like one of Booth's hard-pressed though feeble,

stage

warriors. In

Northern

People sang

in the streets

was hope in the and shook hands with

cities

there

air.

"

strangers,

one another: "It will be over promising by spring!

Booth, too. "Oh,

how I long for the spring!" he

for

cried to the
over.

widowed Mrs. Gary,

"Yes, our news
in
it,

whom

the
I

War

was

already
it,

is

indeed

glorious.

am happy in

and

glory

although Southern-born."

CHAPTER
Johnny

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
Julius Caesar,

Act

//,

scene

GENERAL GRANT'S blue-coated soldiers surged into Richmond on April 3, 1865, almost in the same
hour that the gray-coated Confederates galloped out of the city. On Palm Sunday six days later, in a frame house on the edge of Appomattox, General Lee, wearand a fresh uniform, faced the ing the finest of his swords courteous Grant, who had not dressed up for the ocbluffly casion, and signed the agreement surrendering his army. It was as though one shout of joy rose from the North.

of bells, the boom-boom gigantic spree began to the clashing of cannon, the wail of whistles from factory roofs. Hundreds of thousands of buildings flapped with red, white, and blue shut and homes left empty as bunting. Offices were slammed outside to join in parades to the cockerelpeople poured while drum majors flourished tootling of "Yankee Doodle," their batons, boys turned cartwheels, and men and women, drunk on free beer, reeled and whirled in the red light of
bonfires.
173

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
all

The words were heard everywhere: "God be thanked"; "Thank God/' Twenty thousand businessmen in New York
all Blessbared their heads and sang "Praise God from and Trinity Church, thronged to capacity, quivered ings Flow," the choir or the Te Deum. chant with the

Yet underpinning

was the note of religious thankfulness.

Whom

soaring

by

Booth was in his last week at the Boston Theater, staying with Orlando Tompkins in Franklin Square. On Friday night, Sir Edward Mortimer with William WarApril 14, he played ren as Adam Winterton. Early Saturday morning his Negro dresser rushed into his bedroom without waiting to be rung for and pushing a newspaper at him sobbed: "Oh, Massa Edwin, the President has been shot! And, oh, Massa Edwin, I'm afraid Massa John has done it!"

Long afterward, speaking as though the very shaping of the words hurt him, Booth confided to Joe Jefferson that when he was told this news "it was just as if I was struck on the forehead with a hammer." Yet he accepted the fact instantly, even though it was not yet certain that John Wilkes was the guilty man. As Booth's eyes raced over the account of the lurid scene in Ford's Theater, of how the assassin leaped from the stage box and, he knew flourishing a dagger, shrieked, "Sic semper tyrannis!" doubt that it was his brother knew it, not from beyond
the sketchy description of the man's looks, but from the arrogance, the melodramatic devices of the leap, the flourish and

hurled defiance, the fanaticism behind the act. The Booth blood had spoken. John Wilkes Booth son of a father who wept to see the sparrow fall, yet in his frenzy could stab to kill had shot the President. Edwin stood confounded- His brain
refused

what
.

his instinct recognized.

"But

Johnny!" he whispered.

n
Some months
earlier in

Philadelphia the loving Asia

had

asked John in a low, anxious voice:

"A man came here the other

JOHNNY

175

day for Doctor Booth. What does that mean? I thought it was someone who had known Joseph as a medical student." John said lightly: "I'm he, if to be a doctor means a dealer
in quinine."

The Southern

was money and glory

hospitals were desperate for quinine; there in smuggling it. Asia sat aghast. "You

send it! How?" "In horse collars and so forth." "You run the blockade?"
"Yes."
writes Asia, "that my hero was a spy, a a rebel! I set the terrible words before my blockade-runner, and knew that each one meant death. ... I found myeyes,
"I
self

knew now,"

trying to think with less detestation of those two despicable characters in history, Major Andre and Benedict Arnold." Blockade-running was the least of it. What she did not know was that her brother, living in a room in Washington at the

National Hotel, had been for nearly a year plotting the "capture" as he liked to call it (the word sounded more heroic than "kidnaping") of President Lincoln, who was to be spirited away to Richmond and then exchanged for Confederate prisoners, badly needed by the South. The route must be traced in advance, all kinds of arrangements made; and this was the reason for John's comings and goings in an atmosphere of
thick hush-hush.

The others involved were Michael O'Laughlin and Sam Arnold, second-rate young men who had been at school with him; David Herold, a moronic boy of around twenty who loved to shoot partridges and follow brass bands; George A.
Atzerodt, German-born, once a carriage maker, thickset and with a face like a monkey's; and Lewis Paine, a tough-looking deserter from the Confederates. The conspirators' meeting place was a boardinghouse on Street run by Mrs. Mary Surratt, a widow and "the real

Her son John was in on the plot. Only a motive that dared not show itself to the light could have bound Wilkes
Secesh."

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Booth to men so drearily unworthy of him. Asia once asked she remembered as his school casually about O'Laughlin, whom
friend.

John gave a quick start. "What possessed you to ask about him? Forget his name." On another, later visit he handed his sister with a portentous air a sealed package to be opened "if anything should happen to me." Junius saw John in Washington in February. He had always thought of his younger brother, whom he much admired, as a born leader, but now he changed his mind as he watched Johnny face in the direction of beleaguered Richmond and
with streaming cheeks cry
ginia!"
hysterically:

"Virginia,

Vir-

Their mother had sensed for some time that all was not well with her favorite. She wrote to him uneasily; she was miserably lonely in Edwin's house with the others away so much. "I don't think I am much cared for. ... I never yet doubted your love and devotion to me in fact I always gave you praise for being the fondest of all my boys, but since you leave me to grief I must doubt it. I am no Roman mother. I love my dear ones before country or anything else. Heaven guard you, is

my constant prayer."
John was secretly engaged to Bessie Hale, the daughter of Senator John Parker Hale from New Hampshire, a Lincoln supporter. "Not exactly a secret," Mrs. Booth hinted, "as

Edwin was told by someone you were paying great attention to a young lady in Washington. Her father, I see, has his appointment, would he give his consent? You can but ask you know in my partial eyes you are a fit match for any woman.
.
. . .

"Now I am going to dinner by myself why are you not here

to chat

and keep

me company no you are looking and sayyou

half as well as

ing soft things to one that don't love old mother does."

your

John was not a one-girl man. His whose sister Nellie ran a good-time jh-class whore house on Ohio Avenue, and about this time
right.

She was probably

favorite

was

"

Ella Starr,

JOHNNY
he kept a tryst with Eva, the daughter of another senator, scribbled on an old envelope:
For of

177

who

The

all sad words from tongue or pen saddest are these it might have been.

March

5th, 1865

In John's

room
Between these

Two

had misfired. plans for the kidnaping

fiascos John, wearing a slouch hat, gauntlets, spurs, and a satanic scowl, was present at Lincoln's second inauguration on March Bessie Hale's influence he had a ticket for the 4. Through where he stood quite near the President. platform,
It

was later in March that he called on his friend Charley Warwick, an actor who rented a back room in a house across from Ford's Theater. Having tugged off his boots and slung his spurs across the gas fixture, John filled his pipe, then stretched out on Warwick's bed and smoked himself to sleep. "Who would think," writes Warwick, "to look on that handsome face, so calm and peaceful in repose, that beneath it
slumbered a volcano?

Who could raise the curtain of the near

paced Mrs. the day whip.

future and peer upon the picture of the dying President on that

very bed?" Delay and

failure

had made John savage.

his

He

Surratt's parlor, lashing his

Richmond
Island: "J.

fell

W.

boot with he signed a hotel register in Newport, Rhode Booth & Lady." The girl with him was very

On

likely Ella;

they were given room No. 3. John was on his way where he had a last altercation with Edwin over the to Boston, War. "Good-by, Ned," was his parting. "You and I could
never agree about that." Back in Washington, on April x i, a soft, misty evening, he the thousands on the White lingered with Dave Herold among House lawn listening to Lincoln speaking from a balcony in favor of giving the ballot to the Negro. "Nigger citizenship!" hissed John to Herold when the speech was over and the brass

band was pumping out "Dixie." "Now, by God,

through!"

I'll

put him

178

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
of the

had made kidnaping the President To be thus crushingly thwarted in his sacred determination to rescue the South from tyranny, and in doing so to make his name flame forever in men's minds, had set at work strange, unhappy and inherited impulses in John Wilkes Booth. During the ten days after Richmond's fall Jack Deery, who
obsolete. It

The ending

War

was the

last stroke:

kept a bar near Grover's Theater, noticed that his friend and good customer Booth who, "while a steady drinker, I had always found to respect the amenities and 'drink square,' as we

he could absorb an astonishing quantity now somemy brandy in less than two hours. ... It was more than a spree, I could see that. . . . He seemed to be crazed by some stress of inward feeling, but only one who was very intimate with him could have told
.
. .

used to say
still

retain the bearing of a gentleman times drank at bar as much as a quart of

and

it."

"If
its

Wilkes Booth was mad,"

fall

said Asia later, "his

mind

lost

balance between the

of

Richmond and the

Ill

terrific

end."

his steps with the tap of his cane, Harry Ford, brother of the theater owner, standing at the door with some friends, turned and said emphatically: "Here comes the handsomest man in

April 14 was Good Friday. Like most actors John got up late, and it was about noon when he stopped at Ford's Theater to collect his mail. As he swung along Tenth Street, accenting

Washington!" In the lobby John heard for the first time that the President and Mrs. Lincoln and General and Mrs. Grant were to
see

the

show

this

night.

About four hours

later

met him on Pennsylvania Avenue. Booth was riding

mare, "sitting his horse like a Centaur,"

Charley

Warwick
a yellow

noted. "He was faultlessly dressed, elegant riding boots with a slender steel spur were on his feet." Booth reined in his horse and leaned over to shake ^ hands.
circle of acquaintances

Warwick

seemed to spring out of the ground

JOHNNY
theatrical awareness of his

179

around him and he dominated them all from the height of his horse, talking and laughing and lifting his chin in a fascinating,

power to

please until a carriage

rolled by

down the avenue toward the railway station. Inside sat

a familiar burly figure biting on a cigar. "Hallo," cried Booth, "there goes Grant." As if the sight reminded him of something, he said good-by, wheeled his horse around, and trotted off in the direction of Ford's Theater. General Grant had decided to send regrets for the evening and he and his wife were leaving town, but

Booth did not know

this.

was Tom Taylor's comedy Ameriplay can Cousin, starring Laura Keene. Miss Keene's chief comedian Harry Hawk was to act Asa Trenchard, a role created by Jefferson. Also in the cast was old George Spear, who had broken the news of their father's death to Edwin in California

The

at Ford's

Ow

when Johnny was only fourteen. At seven o'clock John left his hotel, asking the clerk as he swaggered by the desk if he meant to go to Ford's. "There'll
be some
fine acting there tonight!"

mist from passed out into the spring evening. the Potomac hung over the city. Organ-snatches of the Miserere floated occasionally from Catholic churches, draped inside with mourning for Christ's passion and death. In the saloon next to Ford's Booth shouted for brandy. The talk turned on actors and one of the drinkers twitted him with: "You'll never

Then he

be the actor your father was!"

A peculiar expression stole into Booth's face as he answered:

I

"When

leave the stage

I'll

be the most famous

man

in

America."
theater.

was waiting outside the "Buck" to his friends stood with his back to the entrance and his arm across it to keep people out when someone behind him gently pried up two fingers of his hand and shook them. He wheeled around and there was Wilkes Booth. "You'll not want a ticket from me?" Booth suggested winningly.
President Lincoln's

empty

carriage

The doorkeeper Buckingham

ISO

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Buck melted into smiles and introduced Booth to some men from out of town lounging about the lobby as "our distinguished

young

actor."

leaned against the far wall, glancing back and forth from the audience. When he bright shell of the stage to the shadowy moved next his bearing had completely altered. He made not a sound nor a spare motion as he glided down the sloping side aisle past row on row of absorbed spectators. The soldier supposed to be guarding the President's box had sneaked around the corner to a seat in the balcony, and when Booth noiselessly eased open the door of the anteroom that led into the box, not a soul challenged him. He put his eye to a gimlet hole in the box door; it was suspected afterward that he had bored this hole himself during the afternoon. There sat Abraham Lincoln in his special rocking chair. The inside of the box was like a little drawing room. It had a carpet, and the walls were papered in deep red with a design of flowers; there were armchairs and a sofa. Mrs. Lincoln, her plump shoulders bare in a billowy evening dress, sat beside her husband, and beyond them were their guests, a Major Rathbone and his fiancee. All

After an interval, during which he fortified himself with another brandy at the bar, Booth strolled ostentatiously into the theater, humming a tune, and up to the balcony where he

watched the performance. Down on the stage the "English society lady" Mrs. Mountchessington swept into the wing after depositing a snub on the American Asa Trenchard, left standing by himself.
MRS. MOUNTCHESSINGTON.
I am sure, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the manner of good society, and that done will excuse the impertinence of which you have been guilty.

(Exit.

Trenchard, left alone, solil-

oquizes.)

gal you sockdologizing old man-trap. This was the moment in the play, when one actor stood onstage alone, that Booth had counted on. He stole into the box,

TRENCHARD. Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old

JOHNNY
silent as a

l8l

aimed a tiny pocket derringer at Linhead, gave a half-shout, half-roar, then fired. His cry was, Sic semper tyrannis, the noble Brutus' cry to Caesar and the motto of Virginia, which many people swore afterward they had heard him yell as he crossed the stage. Lincoln slid sideways in his rocking chair; his head fell gently against the red wallpaper. Major Rathbone sprang up to grapple with Booth who shook him off. Booth forged to the front of the box, put his hand on the rail and vaulted over. One of the spurs Warwick had admired caught with a tearing sound in the hated Union flag draped over the box front, and he landed with a crash on the apron, his left leg folded under him; a bone had been snapped just above the ankle. "If I hadn't been very courageous," he boasted later, "I'd have given up right there. I thought for an instant I was going to faint." Wrenching himself to his feet, he crossed the stage in a motion "like the hopping of a bullfrog," under the very nose of Harry Hawk as Asa Trenchard. In the wing he brushed between Laura Keene and a young actor named Ferguson, standing ready for their entrances, brushed them so close that his brandied breath warmed their faces; struck aside Miss Keene's tentatively raised hand; plunged down a passage, dragging his hurt leg and slashing with his dagger at two men in his way, and burst through a back door out into the alley
current of
air,

coln's attentively

bowed

where

his

yellow mare waited. Except for hoofbeats on the

by some of the actors backstage, the theater was comparatively quiet, with only a rising hum of astonishment until a scream from Mrs. Lincoln froze everyone's
cobblestones heard

"He has shot the President!" The audience rose, as audiences so often had risen like one man at a Booth's exit. Men swarmed over the footlights, a surprising number brandishing revolvers. "What happened?"
blood.

'Whowasit?" A few people let drop the name Wilkes Booth; they believed they had recognized him. In nearly the same moment the name was being spoken far more confidently by Booth himself.

lS2

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
are

bridge you?" the sergeant at the Navy on the steaming, bright-skinned mare who galloped down on him in the moonlight. "My name is Booth," was the ringing answer. The sergeant let him pass. Far behind him in the glare and hubbub of Ford's Theater, where people fell over one another, swooned, were six soldiers trampled on amid screams and hoarse exclamations,

"Who

Yard

chal-

lenged the rider

carried the President slowly out of the box, slowly through the anteroom, up the balcony aisle, down the stairs, across the and into Tenth Street by the same route that Booth

lobby,

carried Lincoln thirty minutes earlier. They across the street into the house and the room that Charley Warwick had occupied and laid him down on the bed that

had followed

Booth had

lain on.

IV
Later that night the actor John McCullough tore open the door of Edwin Forrest's bedroom in the Metropolitan Hotel in New York and gasped out to Forrest that Lincoln had just been assassinated and that Wilkes Booth was said to have done it. "But I don't believe it," McCullough added. "Well, I do," snarled Forrest. "All those God damned Booths

members of Edwin Booth's audience, creeping home in the horsecar from the Boston Theater, paid almost no attention to one of the passengers who tried to convince them he had heard the news of Lincoln's assassination over the electric telegraph.
Lincoln died early next morning, the heavy bells and wide across the country. Edwin Booth heard them tolling in Boston. Lincoln was dead; the crime had become murder. Booth sent off a telegram to his mother, begging her to keep up her courage: it was not yet established that their John was the murderer. Then he sat alone, his head in his hands. Tompkins' house where he was staying was in black draped immediately, as were most other houses.

are crazy!" In Boston several

When

began to

toll far

JOHNNY
Booth from Henry

183

In the middle of the morning a message was laid before Jarrett, the current manager of the Boston Theater; the theater's fafade was also being hung with crepe. "The President of the United States/' wrote Jarrett, "has . . fallen by the hand of an assassin. Suspicion points to one related to you as the perpetrator of this horrid deed. nearly With this knowledge, I have concluded to close the . . Boston Theater." Booth roused himself to answer: "While mourning, in common with all other loyal hearts, the death of the President, I am oppressed by a private woe not to be expressed in
. .

words."

John Sleeper Clarke was heard a shriek from Asia, who had had the morning paper brought up. While he was trying to calm his wife, a United States marshal pounded on the front door, threw a guard around the house and forbade anyone to leave or enter.
bells tolled in Philadelphia.

The

shaving

when he

The bells were tolling in Cincinnati where Junius Booth was

filling

an engagement.

He wandered into the

hotel lobby after

breakfast and the clerk warned him not to set foot outside, as a mob, hungry for a lynching, had ripped down his playbills all over town. Junius lookea simply bewildered. When the news was broken to him "he was the most horrified man I ever

saw," the eager clerk told a ring of reporters. "For the moment he was overcome by the shock. I suggested to him that it would be better for him to go to his room, and he did so. He had left was filled with scarcely gone upstairs before the room he The mob was fully five hundred in number. They people. would have hanged Booth in a minute if they could have laid

hands upon him.

In

New York

finally smuggled him away." Lilian Woodman drove down Fifth

We

Avenue

flown at halfthrough the tolling bells between rows of flags mast to the house on Nineteenth Street, which already looked sinister. People on the sidewalk pointed at it fearfully. In the
front
ffrief ;

room Mrs. Booth

with Rosalie. The mother was past few hours earlier, if someher world had turned over.
sat

184

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

one had told her John had blown his brains out, she would have counted it the heaviest cross God could have laid on her. Now it was all she had left for which to pray. She moaned: "O God, if this be true, let him shoot himself. Let him not live to be hanged." Just then the postman blew his whistle and handed in a letter from John, written the day before, when he was a peaceI

ful citizen. "I only drop you these few lines to let you know am well. . . . With best love to you all I am your affection-

ate son ever."

Aldrich wrote to Edwin: "Is there anything I can do for you here or elsewhere? God knows my heart is tender for you
this

day."

from the Boston hour of shame for their profession. Warren had comforted Booth at Mary's funeral. He found it harder to give comfort now.
Faithful William

Warren

hurried over

Museum

to sustain his fellow player in this

Booth was

Louis Junius' eldest daughter, Blanche, a talented Secessionist, was in her bedroom, with some fetching new costumes laid out on the bed, contemplating a bright future in the mirror in the person of her Boothesque self, when her Negro maid ran in with the story of "Nunkee J John." In Richmond John T. Ford, owner of the theater where the crime was committed, heard a report that Edwin Booth was the murderer. "Impossible!" Ford exclaimed. "He's not in Washington." Then with the same shock of recognition that had come to Edwin, Ford reflected that the foolhardy Wilkes
St.

In

actress

and a passionate

there.
16, Edwin wrote to Adam Badeau: have labored since my dear Mary was

On Easter Sunday, April

"You know, Ad, how
I

called from me to establish a name that child and all friends might be proud of. You know how I have always toiled for the comfort and welfare of family. . . . You know how loyal I have been from the first of this damned rebel-

my

my

my

lion.

"Alas,

how

frightful

is

the spectacle!

What shall become

of

JOHNNY
me? Poor mother!
I

185

was two days ago one of the Oh, how little did happiest I dream, my boy, when on Friday night I was as Sir Edward Mortimer exclaiming, 'Where is my honor now? Mountains * of shame are piled upon me! that I was not acting but uttering
her either dead or dying.
. .

go
.

to

New York today expecting to find

I

men

alive.

Now what am I?

the fearful truth."

After Booth had been questioned and his trunks searched by leave Boston. Tompkins went deputy marshals he was free to

York

with him, and a few courageous friends met them at the New station early on Monday morning, April 17. There was he nothing to be said. Booth's face was perfectly stony as
the train. stepped off

Men's sense of fitness was offended because Abraham Lincoln had met his end in a playhouse. On Easter Sunday and for weeks to come the theater and its people were anathematized from Northern pulpits. "Would that Mr. Lincoln had fallen elsewhere than at the one clergyman. very gates of Hell," groaned And another: "We remember with sorrow the pkce of his . It was a poor pkce to die in." death. And still another: "The theater is one of the last pkces to the illumined and decorated which a good man should go . which thousands are constantly passing into gateway through the embrace of gaiety and folly, intemperance and lewdness, infamy and ruin." It was a sad time for actors. They were reminded once again that they were vagabonds. The martyred Lincoln's blood was on their heads. Those who had known Wilkes Booth bore a him off. "He was yet they did not wholly cast
. .
. .

special stigma,

so young, so bright, so gay," mourned Clara Morris. "Many a "showed runnels made by bitter painted cheek," she went on, and one old actress, with quivering lips, exdaimea: *One tears, woe doth tread upon another's heel, so fast they follow!* but with no thought of quoting, and God knows the words expressed the situation perfectly."

l86

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

sounded: "Arrest all actors!" Uglycrowds milled about stage entrances. When a Washtempered defended the people of Ford's ington storekeeper bravely the mob threw a rope Theater, who were his best customers, around his neck; he was barely saved from being lynched.

The hue and cry

Because Wilkes Booth was so much at home in Ford's, the Secret Service was convinced someone in the company had been his accomplice. John T. Ford, Laura Keene, and Harry Hawk were arrested, though Miss Keene and Hawk were soon let go through the intervention of Lutz, her gambler lover. The actors at Ford's had to report to the police daily.

who were caught like insects Hundreds of letters, truculently and in the circle of a spotlight. were received by every foully abusive, and mostly unsigned, of the wretched family: "We hate the name of Booth member Bullets are marked for you. leave quick or remember. Revolvers are loaded with which to shoot you down. . Your life will be the penalty Your house will be burnt.
But
it

was the

helpless

Booths

if

tarry heare 48 hours longer." Sensation hunters overran the Maryland farm and wondered aloud if the Judas tree on the lawn mightn't be taken as a symbol Belair Negro, hostile to the Booths, of the former household.

you

gabbled malevolently of their secret "doin's."

neighbor swore that Johnny had been a cruel boy who tortured the forest animals. An abandoned trench, which John and Ask had dug one summer looking for arrowheads, was rediscovered as "an underground store for secreted arms." The Clarkes' ram(reporters described it as ransacked twice by police. Every "mysteriously built") was scrap of paper belonging to John was confiscated including a small photograph of him that he had hung over the beds of

bling old house in Philadelphia

Asia's children, saying charmingly:

"Remember me,

babies, in

your prayers."
Just as the North went on a spree of joy when the War was won, so now she went the other way: on an orgy of sorrow, a spree of grief. Once again cannon boomed. The bells that had

JOHNNY
pealed

187

now tolled everlastingly, and the drums were muffled. Most men wore black bands and even the skies were leaden those first few days.
April 21 the solemn funeral cavalcade with Lincoln's out from Washington. In the procession body escorting the hearse along Pennsylvania Avenue a torn flag was carried, the flag that had caught Wilkes Booth's spur and might yet, through the injury inflicted on him, catch the fleeing criminal. On April 24 the body of the man Wilkes Booth had murdered arrived in New York, after being borne ceremoniously across on the ferry from Jersey City. Edwin Booth was in
set

On

New

York

then,

black crepe.

He was

where every building was festooned with in New York when Lincoln's body,

drawn by sixteen white horses in funeral trappings and followed by floats, wreaths, and floral monuments, moved toward Qty Hall between fields of faces to the nerve-racking beat of the funeral drums. He was in New York while the body lay on a catafalque on somber display at City Hall, and thousands on thousands of people filed past to look down on it. Alongside the columns bordered in black that described
at lugubrious length the funeral train's progress, the condition of the body, and the royal reception in city after city, the

John was an

papers ran stories about all the Booths. It was suggested that eater of opium, but his taste for women provided the best copy. Typical yras one reporter's tale of a well-born
girl in Philadelphia who had pursued John and been squarely warned by him that he felt no love for her, "though a

young

sufficient desire."

"Go home," John was quoted as saying, "and beware of actors." But the girl persisted and was deAnother
story,

bauched.

which was true, told how the actress Henduring a drunken evening in John's hotel room in Albany, had stabbed him in the face, almost spoiling his Within the last few days John's sporting-house sweetprofile. heart Ella Starr had unsuccessfully tried to loll herself. She
rietta Irving,

swallowed chloroform, then lay down to die with under her pillow.

his picture

l88

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
still

The authorities discovered that Junius' daughter Marion was

married to the mother of his first child former drinkBlanche. The public was reminded of Edwin's the morsel of the elder Junius Booth's ing. It was served up of Lincoln was born out of wedlock. adultery. The murderer The whole fantastic tribe was illegitimate; their strain of JewIn their rout ish blood made them kin to Fagin and Shylock. echoed the defiance of have the Booths and

born while he was

agony

might

Edmund

in

King Lear when he

cried:

Now,

gods, stand

up

for bastards!

The Clarkes remembered the package John had given Asia. inside They took it out of Clarke's safe and opened it, finding
a
letter

written the previous November by John to his mother his family of any complicity in in entirely cleared Lincoln's kidnaping his plan at that time and also a much It May Concern." In this "To longer letter addressed last he had tried to explain his motives for the kidnap plot;

which he

Whom

it

was

shrill,

over both

letters to

May inflammatory he was arrested, sent under guard to Washington possession, and thrown into Old Capitol Prison, where John T. Ford was, and the conspirators who had been rounded up: Mrs. Surratt, Paine, Atzerodt, O'Laughlin, and Arnold. John Surratt had fled to Canada, and Dave Herold had escaped into the night
with Booth.
Asia expected a child in August, a child that John had hoped would be named for him. Her doctor certified she was unfit to travel, otherwise she too would have been haled to to follow her as polite detective was assigned Washington. she paced heavily from room to room and to read her letters, which she placed in his hand without look or word; many of

Clarke turned self-pluming, illogical apologia. the United States Marshal. Because the Concern" had been in his It "To

Whom

them were from Edwin. "Think no more of John

as

your

brother," Edwin had written, "he is dead to us now as he soon must be to all the world, but imagine the boy you loved to be
in that better part of his spirit in another world."

JOHNNY
And
was
again: "I have
little girl

189

to

whom

had a heartbroken letter from the poor he had promised so much happiness/* This

Bessie Hale.

detective implored Asia to let his wife ("who cried to think how ill-treated and sick Mrs. Clarke actually was") take over his duty. Asia cut him short, "Obey your orders, but tell your wife I thank her very kindly" adding later, "I should rather have been watched by ten men who

The young

could keep quiet than by one chattering female." Another to feel the hand of the law fall on his shoulder was Junius, who shortly before the murder had written to John

urging him in a brotherly way to give up the "oil business." Federal agents were suspicious of what "oil business" meant
(it meant what it said; John had been speculating in oil stock) and Junius was clapped into jail. "I wish John had been killed before the assassination for the sake of the family," were his

bleak words, almost his only words, as he drooped beside his guard in the train to Washington where on arrival he filled

another cell in Old Capitol. Perhaps their name's dishonor meant more to the Booths than the blood on their brother's
hands.
his influential friends,

movements were watched. Tom Aldrich stayed with him in the house on Nineteenth Street. Little Edwina, blissfully unaware

Owing to the pressure brought to bear on the authorities by Edwin was not arrested, though his

of her Nunkee's change into a bogeyman, a threat to frighten other children, was still in Philadelphia with her Aunt Asia. It was dangerous for a Booth to be seen abroad, but sometimes after dark Edwin and Aldrich slipped out for air, keeping close together in the shadow of the brownstones. With the rest of the family Booth waited stoically for news of John's capture. To his southern niece Blanche De Bar Booth, to whom John had been almost like a brother, Edwin wrote during this trial of waiting: "I would have you, Blanche, if you can believe me true and worthy of some share of your affection, to open your heart to me when care oppresses you, to confide
in

me

as

your dear friend and loving uncle."

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

He never spoke of John, whose portrait hung in his bedroom and had not been removed. When he and Aldrich lay
down at night the light of the street lamps shone in through the shutters fastened against the hostile city, and in the faint come alive and to watch them gleam the portrait seemed to as they closed their eyes, though not to sleep. Each intently knew that the other was thinking with pity of the fugitive.

V
take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea! He may make his bed in hell; but he will not escape," thundered an outraged divine to his conwas on. gregation in Boston. The manhunt

"He may

The War Department

that

circulated bills informing all citizens

THE MURDERER
Of
our late beloved President,
IS

Abraham

Lincoln

STILL

AT LARGE

$50,000

REWARD

Will be paid by this Department for his apprehension.

is Five Feet 7 or 8 inches high, slender build, high forehead, black hair, black eyes, and wore a heavy black moustache, which there is some reason to believe lias been

BOOTH

shaved oS.

in dingy

Hundreds of people had seen the murderer. Turbaned seers back rooms saw him in their crystal balls; astrologers

read the stars to locate him. Police stations filled

up with him;

JOHNNY

191

he had already been arrested in Canada, New England, out west as far as Chicago. The real Wilkes Booth was much nearer Washington than any of these places. By April 22 he had got no further than the Maryland shore of the Potomac at Nanjemoy Stores, where he crouched in the marshes waiting for his chance to cross into Virginia. Day was just breaking, and Dave Herold had slunk off to the nearest house to beg for food. Booth's clothes were wet and slimed; his mustache was gone; his stubbly cheeks had fallen in; his skin was gray; his eyes glared out from pits of shadow. His broken leg had been roughly set, but gangrene had begun and was spreading through his body. Keeping his head cautiously lowered and slanting his page to catch the pale dayhe wrote in pencil in his diary: "After being hunted like light, a dog through swamps, woods, and last night being chased by gunboats till I was forced to return wet, cold, and starving, with every man's hand against me, I am here in despair. And why? For doing what Brutus was honored for what made
Tell a hero." He had read every newspaper he could lay his hand on, and what had he learned? That he had brought misery on his family, that every Booth that breathed was under suspicion of treason, and that a nation sickened with sorrow and rage compared Lincoln to Christ and himself to Judas. Unhappy the city that had nursed him "pity, oh, pity unhappy Balti-

more."
Speaking through the mouths of their public men the North raked him with curses, the South repudiated him. "At the moment he struck down Mr. Lincoln he also struck himself from existence. There can be no more a J. Wilkes Booth in any country. If caught he will be hanged. If he escapes he must dwell in a solitude. He has the brand of Cain upon his brow."
"I

am

sure,"

Booth wrote
for me, since

in his diary, "there

is

no pardon

in the

Heaven

man condemns me so. ... God,

try and forgive me, and bless my mother." He had perfectly expected to be hailed as a hero. All during his flight he had boasted of his deed, acknowledging and even

192

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Booth, the slayer of Abraham Lincoln!"

as a sort of reward to whoever gave him flaunting his identity and Herold a helping hand. "Do you know who I am? Yes! I

am John Wilkes
It

was as well for him now, lying disconsolate, that he had no vision of the place he had won for himself in history. Already there was mourning for Lincoln's death among the British of Paris; in Scandimasses, the French masses, and students
navian harbors flags hung at half-mast. And as the name of Lincoln was to become famous to the far ends of the earth so, deed to became infamous, though coupled with it, was Booth's his name might be forgotten. Years later Count Leo Tolstoy, of the Caucasus, put a traveling in a remote, savage region Lincoln in the hand of a Circassian tribesman of

photograph

who looked down at it so mournfully that Tolstoy questioned him. "I am sad," the man answered, "because I feel sorry that
he had to die by the hand of a
villain."

But this was a future Booth could not know. In the swamps of Maryland he lay in hiding, writing painfully on his cramped whirled up page; and now a great gust of reviving arrogance
in him, fanning his pride, so near its embers; floating like a red haze in front of his eyes; blinding and inflating him. "I do not I have done well. repent the blow I struck. ... I think

Though
when,
if

am

the world
great,

abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me, knew my heart, that one blow would have

made me

though

did desire

no

greatness.

Tonight

try to escape these bloodhounds once more. Who, who can read his fate? God's will be done. I have too great a soul to die
like a criminal

O, may He, may

He spare me that,

and

let

me

die bravely."

Four days later, when lower Maryland and all Virginia were
bristling with soldiers, a troop of cavalry commanded by Colonel Everton Conger and Lieutenant Luther Baker surrounded a tobacco barn belonging to a farmhouse in a forsaken stretch of country near Port Royal, Virginia. It was about two in the morning of April 26. Inside the barn lurked Booth and Herold, awakened suddenly by footsteps outside.

JOHNNY
"You must surrender in there/' roared Baker.
five minutes."

193

"We give you

pillared gallery of the little southern of the farmer's family huddled in their to the male voices bandying challenges nightdresses, listening The Negro farmhands swayed goggle-eyed back and forth. below. They could all hear the trapped Booth as he called: "There's a man in here who wants to surrender." The barn door opened just a slit to let out Herold who blundered into the starlight, reaching for the sky, prancing and in a Cakewalk of terror. "I always liked Mr. Lincoln's

On the white-painted,
women

farmhouse the

jittering

simpered. jokes," "If you don't shut

he

up

we'll cut off

growled one of the

a tree.

soldiers as

they tied

you* damned head," him still chattering to

Booth, alone now and as fantastically outnumbered as any hero of the melodramas he starred in, tried to go on parleying. "Captain," he called ringingly, "give me a chance. Draw off your men and I'll fight them singly. Give a lame man a show." When no answer came he went on almost gaily: "Well, my brave boys, you can prepare a stretcher for me. One more stain
tossed a burning brand inside the barn. of straw caught fire and the interior was lit up brilliantly. heap Through the horizontal crevices between the slats the lone, black figure of Booth became instantly as visible to his audience as if he stood on the stage of a theater. "Behind the blaze," recalled Conger, "I saw him standing upright, leaning on a crutch. He looked like his brother Edwin, whom he so much resembled that I believed for a moment the whole pursuit to

on the old banner! Colonel Conger

"

have been a mistake.

His eyes were lustrous

like fever,

and swelled and rolled in

the blaze that made him he turned glaring at the fire as

terrible beauty. In vain he peered; second visible concealed his enemy.

to leap upon it and extinguish but it made such headway that this was a futile impulse it, and he dismissed it. As calmly as upon a battlefield a veteran stands amidst the hail of ball and shell and plunging iron, Booth,
if

194

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

carbine to his left hand and drawing his revolver, shifting his turned at a man's stride and, in a kind of limping-halting jump, for the door and the last resolve of death, which we

name despair, sat on his high, bloodless forehead." There was a loud crack over the hiss of flames. The watchers saw Booth gather himself up, seem to tower above his true

pushed

One of the men outside, Sergeant height, then fall headlong. Boston Corbett, immediately claimed to have shot him. But Booth had threatened repeatedly to kill himself if he were cornered, and many of the friends who knew him best were had done. always sure this was what he Lieutenant Baker leaped inside and dragged out Booth's under a locust body. Booth lay unconscious on the dewy grass
tree while the officers stooped over him. It

was the dark, cool

hour before dawn. Booth might have been a soldier, honorably wounded, in the arms of his comrades. Water was poured into his mouth. He blew it out feebly, opened his eyes and moved ."Then he mother. his lips to shape the words: "Tell . fainted again. When he came to, he finished his sentence: mother ... I ... died ... for ... my ... "Tell .
. . . .
. .

country." Baker, who was washing Booth's face with ice water, pointed out his wound, which was in the back of the neck. The bullet had passed through the spinal column. The heat from the burning barn was getting so fierce that Booth was carried by the shoulders and feet up to the farm-

house porch. The soldiers were proceeding inside when their burden, overcome by a longing for the open air, begged
weakly: "No, no, let me die here." "The damned Rebel is still living!" drawled one of the officers.

straw mattress was laid across the doorsill and Booth was eased down onto it so that he rested half in and half out of the house. His arms, legs, and body from the waist down were
paralyzed. His eyes screamed with agony. He gasped: "Water, water," then hoarsely begged to be turned over on his side,

then on

his back,

then on his face.

JOHNNY

195

"You can't lie on your face!" objected Colonel Conger. "Kill me, kill me," pleaded Booth. In the east the sky was turning red; the meadows began to be
young woman, belonging to the on whose porch Booth lay in suffering, had stolen down family from the gallery and drew near him as though pulled by
strings, knelt, dipped his lips. She slipped a

flooded with pink light,

her handkerchief in water and moistened pillow under his head and stroked his

forehead.

The morning air, steadily lightening, made the others

shiver, but Booth did not feel it. His body was like a sheet of flame. In a gurgling voice he cried again: "Kill me, kill me."

want you to get well," don't want you to die. retorted Lieutenant Baker. Both officers, without waiting the few minutes necessary for all to be over for Booth, were
pawing through
his clothes.

"We

We

The meager

discoveries

were

a knife, a pipe, a nail file, a compass, a diamond passed around: found fastened to the helpless man's undershirt, his pin and, little red leather-bound diary with a pocket in the back conHale and four pretty actresses. taining the photographs of Bessie While the officers, talking across Booth, discussed arrangements to carry his dead body back to Washington, the dying man indicated he wished his paralyzed arms to be lifted so that he could see them. He stared at his hands, and his lips moved for the last time, producing a thread of sound, as he whispered:
"Useless, useless."

moment

or

two

later

he died.

The

attentive

Southern

woman asked in a low voice if she might have a lock of his hair,
which was cut off and given to her.

VI
Mrs. Booth in New York had had a telegram from Philaas Asia was ill. Launt delphia urging her to come at once, drove with her to the ferry for Jersey City. In the Thompson street he heard a newsboy yell: DEATH OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH! CAPTURE OF HIS COMPANION! He slammed down the carriage windows, made an excuse to draw the curtains and talked

196

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

like the refrain of a song, the loudly to cover the shouting but, same strident cry met them at every crossing. When they reached the ferry, Thompson shepherded Mrs. corner on deck. No one recognized her Booth into a

behind her widow's veil. At the Jersey City station, where Edwin had rescued Robert Lincoln, Thompson settled her in the train, then left her to buy a newspaper. Hurrying back to in her hand, and shielding her say good-by, he put the paper the passengers in the aisle, he said: "You from with his

quiet

your courage. The paper in your hand will tell you what, unhappily, we must all wish to hear. John Wilkes
will

body

need

now

all

is

dead."

car was the murderer's death, which most people agreed had been too good for him. He had cheated the gallows. Behind the broad pages of her news-

The one topic in the crowded

Over the
though

her child's last hours. paper Mrs. Booth read the story of coarse voices, his living voice spoke to her intimately, all the world might read his message: "Tell mother I

died for my country." She gave no cry, made no sudden movement. Those sitting near her noticed nothing strange. Her
grief

was

like

an inward bleeding.

Asia Clarke was in bed

when

old Mr. Hemphill, employed

at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Theater, asked to be let in to see her. In the middle of the room he steadied himself by a

hand on the table and refused to meet the young woman's eyes. His face worked; he had known Johnny. The very way he stood told his news, and Asia demanded tonelessly: "Is it
over?"
"Yes,

madam." "Taken?"
"Yes."

fell back, her face to the wall, she heard the old retainer, who was sobbing himself, leave the room, and after an interval, the street door close.

"Dead?" madam." She sobbed with thankfulness. As she

"Yes,

JOHNNY
manding
these

197

Edwin Booth had a number of letters from self-styled "widows" of his brother who wrote from various cities dethat the family acknowledge their claims. One of women got hold of poor Rosalie and swindled her of what

money

she had.

John Clarke and Junius were let out of prison. Clarke, Edwin had gone scot free, was boiling with rage at his bad luck at having married into the family. The Booths were all "lagos, male and female"; he loathed their "secretiveness." He demanded a divorce from Asia, "which would be his only salvation now." In the end he stayed with his wife, but Johnny's warning, once enigmatic, flashed back to Asia: "Bear in mind that you're
furious that

only a professional steppingstone." Not only her husband, but also some lifelong friends, showed Ask a side of human nature she would not have believed in, had it not been proved to her. "There is no solidity in Love," she wrote bitterly, "no truth in Friendship, no steadiness in
Marital Faith."

The nurse she had engaged for her confinement refused to attend her. The family doctor, though he had seen the Clarkes through many illnesses, could barely be induced to come to the house. Among those who did come was a blond young
named Claud Burroughs who prattled glibly that he had been sent secretly to Mrs. Clarke by her brother Edwin to obtain "the paper she had pkced in her bosom." Asia later asked Edwin if this were true. "I never sent Buractor

roughs or any other actor, or any human being to your house on any mission or with any message whatsoever," he told
her.

Then

she had one

letter,

alone of

its

kind, and therefore

more precious

"sufficient," she cried, "to set the faithlessness

of the world aside, and almost revive belief in human goodness." It was from a young actress, one of those whose photograph had been found in John's diary. Effie Germon, a family connection of the Jeffersons, had played the title role in Al

198
or

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

The Wonderful Lamp, in Washington at Grover's Theater,

on the night of the assassination. "Dear Madam," her letter ran, "Although a perfect stranger to you, I take the liberty of offering my sympathy and aid to you in your great sorrow and sickness. If my mother or myself can be of the slightest use to you in any way in this world we
the rival of Ford's,

should be only too happy.

illness

should have offered before, but

prevented.

May God help and bless you, is the constant

prayer of EFFIE GERMON." Edwin's friends also showed their true colors. Elizabeth Stoddard ("a good hater," one of her circle called her) wrote to her brother in words that had a shrill crow of satisfaction: "I never was more overwhelmed by any outside matter than by this. . . Your news of Edwin's marriage is about as astounding as the rest. Is it Laura Edmonds or Matrie Woodman? Do find out. Two or three nights ago I had a dream of him. He will undoubtedly go to the devil sooner or later. All the elements that make up life are in his composition, except one that of courage. John B. has brute courage. Do you be.

lieve at all in

again. I pity

the

human fidelity? Think of Edwin's marrying woman, unless she has a dramatic genius

superior to his and then she can overpower him. I shall be most curious to learn who the person is . . . but won't this business
it up?" Booth had assured the good Cambridge spinster Emma Gary, one of those whose had not been found wanting, friendship that in Philadelphia "there is one great heart firm and faster bound to me than ever," and he meant his fiancee, Blanch Hanel. But Mrs. Stoddard's cool surmise was right. Blanch

break

Hanel's father put his foot

and the engagement was broken

letter

down against marriage

off.

to a Booth,

Announcement of John's death brought Booth an overdue of condolence from Richard Stoddard, which began without other salutation: "Edwin When I heard of the dreadful calamity which has fallen upon us my sorrow was twofold for the nation and for you. My impulse was to write you
at once

and say so, but

I did

not for several reasons.

JOHNNY
"First, I

199

could say nothing which could for a moment mitiwhich you would not be likely to hear from gate your
grief or
others.
it seemed best to me that you should be left to alone with your woe and God. yourself "Third, I knew that if you ever understood me and I think you did once you would understand my silence as well as my

"Second,

speech.

"Fourth, I have always made it a rule of my life when I have lost a friend or a friend has lost me to take no step, and to permit none to be taken with my sanction, toward renewing
the old relationship. There is no cement in this world . . . strong enough to mend a broken friendship. . . . "Now I write you and why? . Because John is dead, not by the rope which he could not have escaped (and by which I would not have had him die, for your sake and your mother's and the fame of your great dead father), but fighting for his life. Because it is all over with him, I write you rewith tears, for your sake and his own. For my joicing, though own part I remember him well and kindly. I saw no ill in him when I met him at your house and shall think of him, or try to as he seemed to me then, not as we are told he was later, and
. .

as

we know he was at last. That God may sustain you and bless
is

you and pardon him

the prayer of your once friend, never

enemy. Farewell, RICHARD,"

first

A letter from Badeau was just as much in character. At the

news of John's crime Badeau, who didn't share Stoddard's confidence that it would be best to leave their friend alone with his woe and God, had written instantly: "Try, dear Ned, and . . bear up. Try and be a man. . . . Dear Ned, my heart bleeds for you." Professor Louis Agassiz, one of those scholars and gentlemen whom Booth looked up to as being of a different clay from poor players, slapped the table when his name was solicited in support of Booth. "Indeed he shall have it! I love
.

that boy!"

There was

Julia

Ward Howe. With

all

her zeal for die

200

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

North and Lincoln, she addressed a poem to John Wilkes Booth, which she called Pardon. There was Launt Thompson, who, at the very height of hostile feeling, appeared in public
with the mother of the murderer, and moved into Edwin's house to be as near
his trouble.

Aldrich, who as possible to him in

Tom

the

of the conspirators opened in Washington. Aldrich and Lilian Woodman watched one session. They were leaving the courtroom on the second story of the old Arsenal when stairs. It was Edthey met a man running lightly up the spiral the defense, which was preparing a plea win, summoned
trial

On May

10

the day John would have been twenty-seven

by

of insanity and trying to prove that Wilkes Booth had had such power over the minds of others as would easily sway his associates. Yet after interrogating Edwin narrowly about his
brother they dared not risk calling on him.

While he was
that time
still

in

Washington Booth went to see Junius,

at

landing in

New York from San Francisco, was arrested, grilled and down about John's affairs, of which he knew nothing, up and finally set free. On July 7 Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mrs. Mary Surratt were hanged in the courtyard of the Arsenal in the presence of a lip-licking crowd. Fierce afternoon
sunlight

in his prison cell.

The lackadaisical Joseph Booth,

pounded the prison yard, making mercilessly clear how Herold grinned idiotically at the spectators, how the woman's skirts were tied around her legs. Trie bodies were lifted down, tumbled into coffins and shoveled into waiting graves in a corner of the yard, a stone's throw off from where John Wilkes lay buried. "It is a great blessing," Edwin wrote to Emma Gary, "that I have had so much occupation all this while, else I should have gone mad, I fear." And to anevery
detail,

other friend:

"When

will

all this

trouble leave

me?"

William Bispham took turns with Aldrich in staying close to Booth whose dazed, wretched face and ceaseless brooding over his lost plans ("beautiful plans I had for the future all blasted

JOHNNY
now") made them
afraid that if he didn't

201

go mad, he would

drink again. begin to

of his comforts was to remind himhow he had saved Robert Lincoln from possible death. He self described this to Bispham over and over, and at last to distract

One

him Bispham coaxed him to set down what he remembered of his boynood in the form of letters to Edwina. The scheme
worked. Bispham, reading almost over the writer's shoulder, found the memoir delightful, and, remarkably in the circumstances, full of humor. And as Booth relived his rich past a but not the whole, little of the savor of life came back to him
ever.

had been struck down twice with too short a time between the blows. He was like some poor insect trodden under by a giant foot, which after a pause creeps forward, is trodden and with heroic vitality still feebly stirs its filaments of again, and crawls on mechanically, but with no faith or joy left legs in its insect existence. Years later Booth told William Winter:

He

have thought of dreadful things that might believed there was no horror that I had not but I never dreamed of such a dreadful thing as imagined,
"All

my

life I

happen to me.
that."

may

the case for her family. "Those who have passed through such an ordeal," she wrote, "if there are any such, to forgive, slow to resent; they never relearn to be

Ask put

quick

human nature, they never resume their old place in the world, and they forget only in death." She and Edwin felt the shame the most after their mother.
trust in

Junius had written quite cheerily to Edwin from prison that "we must use philosophy 'Tis a mere matter of time. ... I
feel sure

Time

will bring all things right

that

is,

as right as

we have any right to expect." Junius and Joseph, not having within
earnestness that

had made

their

name

passionate acgreat, suffered less,

them the

Asia turned back to the world, cordingly. But when Edwin and the faces they showed were branded with suffering.

PART FIVE

CHAPTER

Another Juliet
This
is

not Romeo, he's some other 'where. Romeo and Juliet, Act /, scene i

That Booth appeared as Hamlet. At first after his brother's crime he had sworn he would never act again. In the stupor of his anguish he longed to go far off, to sit alone, to shroud his face in a classic pose of mourning, to ruminate on his shame. Nothing but the most routine necessity drove him back to the stage. The whole family was enormously in debt, for no one had been
working, and ironically the only trade these people knew, who shunned the eyes of men and whose only wish was to hide their heads, must be carried on in the full sweep of the
limelight.

"Is THE Assassination of Caesar to be Performed?" York Herald raved when Edwin Booth's the return to the stage was announced for January 3, 1866. "Will Booth appear as the assassin of Caesar? would be, perhaps, the most suitable character."

New

Other newspapers spoke up in defense of Booth, the Tribune cordially predicting that "the Winter Garden will be thronged tonight as it has rarely been," and, sure enough, a dense crowd milled excitedly in and out of the lobby; even the
205

206

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Lafarge House next door was jammed with ticket seekers. Ladies in evening dress wandered unescorted through the crush as they would never have dreamed of doing on an ordinary night. Twice as many police as usual were on hand. Poor John Wilkes, seeking fame for himself, had willy-nilly built up his greatest rival's fame. Men who never went to the theater and had never before heard of Edwin Booth had heard of him now

and were yelling for admittance. This was not an audience; it was a mob. What would it do to Booth? The curtain rose and an instant went by before die crowd picked him out, sitting in the middle of the brilliant Danish court he had chosen to be discovered rather than make an entrance. And then the sight of that slight, black, seated figure did something to them all. As one man they leaped to their feet and cheered and cheered; not a single person was left sitting down. From gallery to pit the house was white with waving handkerchiefs. "Three groans for the New York Herald/" somebody shouted, and three hollow "Boo-oos" went shuddering through the house. Booth trembled in his carved chair; his head drooped onto his breast. After several minutes of this pandemonium, he slowly stood up and bowed very deep. His eyes were swimming with tears. And as the ovation by the audience said many things, so Booth's deliberately low obeisance meant much more than the thanks of the player who must please to live. It was the

acknowledgment of a man long on trial, to

his peers has restored his honor.

whom acquittal by

few pounds, but was outraged when people compli"I don't feel as I look!" A few weeks back at work soon pulled the weight off. A few weeks more, and the
gained a

Next Booth put on Richelieu in the ornate new production that had been almost ready a year earlier. Rose Eytinge played Julie, the Cardinal's ward. During Booth's tragic time away from the stage, his physical health had improved. He had even
mented him

chronic shooting headache knocked at his brain like an old acquaintance returning. His sleep was troubled; if someone

ANOTHER JULIET
to throw.

2OJ

woke him suddenly he would start up and grope for something

a change!" was all one actor could say who had with him in 1857 and remembered him brimming "with played life and vivacity," and who met him again now. "What a

"What

change!"

Most
gan to

most gloomy and sad, Booth beout socially again. Always there was the go danger that
reluctantly, looking

some

sly accident

would

tear off the skin that hid the

Booth

shame. And one night one did. At James Lorimer Graham's the men had trooped into the library after dinner and Booth, drifting a little apart, was austerely inspecting the bric-a-brac after tie way of lonely guests. "As his fate would," recollected William Dean Howells, who was there, "he went up to the cast of a huge hand that lay on one of the shelves." "Whose hand is this, Lorry?" he asked, picking it up and turning it over. Graham didn't answer, and Booth asked again:

"Whose hand is this?"

"It's Lincoln's hand," said Graham desperately. Howells, who like the rest had winced with pity, writes that "the man for whom it meant such unspeakable things put the cast softly down without a word." "These things are agony to me," Booth muttered to a fellow guest at another formal party where he stood backed against the wall with eyes begging for rescue and arms folded across his chest. The women's gush especially tortured him. They

were

all

intruders, these

would-be admirers.

"Dearest Edwin," began a letter, directed to the Winter Garden box office, from an eighteen-year-old girl who signed "I have taken this opportunity to let you herself "Edith," know of my intense devotion to you, and now notwithstanding
strong opposition declare my love. . . . "Of course I would insist on your leaving the stage, having enough to support us both in luxury I never could endure to see you take the lover's part with any one but myself. It is agony to me now to see Miss Eytinge in Richelieu. . . ."

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Booth's home was his refuge. He spent at least an hour every day sitting with his mother, and the reminiscences they matched together consoled the stricken old woman, whose family life was her whole source of interest. He and the four-year-old

Edwina went to have their pictures taken. Booth sat in a studio armchair with Edwina first on his lap, nestling her head in his bosom, then standing beside him as close as possible; her hand was curled in his, her small, white-stockinged legs were pressed
against his knees.
stage.

He had almost a horror of allowing her back-

Only now and then before a matinee she might sit in his dressing room and watch him paint his face. There was one name she had heard him called by so many times in the theater and at home that once at the table when somebody offered her
"a piece of omelet" she chirped:

"Why,

that's

Papa!"

year had gone by since Booth's return to his profession, almost two years since the tragedy that had made him leave it. On January 22, 1867, after the curtain had fallen at the

Winter Garden, it was immediately pulled up again, the scene was dismantled and modern furniture lugged in so the
stage

could be reset

and

delicate

to the one divine spark their sturdier clay lacked, was at last presented with the much talked-of gold medal to commemo-

drawing room. Then Booth, looking foreign among the clubmen all gathered to pay homage
as a

hundred nights of Hamlet. For now more than ever, New Yorkers agreed, an actormanager who gave serious pkys the distinguished productions Edwin Booth did, deserved to be honored. All too many managers, smiling alertly, shrugged off any responsibility for elevating the public taste. Tony Pastor had opened his so-called Opera House on Broadway; his variety program catered to an
rate his

all-male audience that kept

its

hats on.
in

And made

bold

success of

Adah Menken, who

Mazeppa had worn a dreek

by

the

chiton with nothing underneath but invisible fleshings, the management of Niblo's had allowed to open an extravaganza called The Black Crook, in which the chorus women

pranced on in black

young

tights.

ANOTHER JULIET
The innovation tore
all

2Op

the

but shook their

fists,

town apart. Parents and clergymen and the mass of the public rushed to

Niblo's to see the double row of shapely underpinnings flash along the stage like suave black scissors.

January Booth gave The Merchant of Venice, hold the stage long chiefly because of his inas Shylock, His adequacy performance had wonderful moments. At the Jew's first appearance halfway up a flight of stairs, bargaining with Bassanio, the laconic
Later
this

which

failed to

Three thousand

ducats; well?

was
line,

like the attack

of an instrument in a virtuoso's hands.

The

This Jacob from our holy Abram was,

conjured up the generations reaching back and back in pride

of race.

But his grasp of the character was not sure; he couldn't get the clue to Shylock. "Somehow I can feel no sort of inspiration or spirituality in the atmosphere of that play," he complained
to Dr.

Horace Furness, a typical academician with his nose to the page, who studied Shakespeare analytically in contrast to the actor's method, which relied on intuitive flashes and
explosions of sympathy.

Yet when Booth studied Shylock no

nothing exploded. "I can't mount the animal for such I consider Shylock to be. . . - He seems so earthy that the little gleams of light that I have perceived while acting other parts are absent."
flashes broke,

Booth was

productions he starred in. After The Merchant closed, he gave Othello, and for a change he acted the Moor instead of his usual devilishly fascinating lago with the "leopard tread." His portrait of Othello was of an entirely noble, dedicated character, and while most men in the audience thought it rather tame, the other half of the house was smitten almost to a woman. In a soft green silk robe that showed the movement of muscles,

directing, imaginatively

and painstakingly, the

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Booth looked Oriental, exotic, sumptuous. His face framed in a white headdress was bronzed, not blackened, by desert
suns Arabian, not African. "A proud, beautiful face!" cried Mrs. John Sherwood. "Desdemona was not worthy of it." which charmed the stones to move, Like

Amphion's

lyre,

Booth's voice in the

lines,

If it

Twere now to
could not be heard without

were now to die, be most happy,

tears. Otis

Skinner, who saw the was one of the few men to be performance some years later, of hot pride and deeply touched by it. In the alternating spurts idealization of the thing loved and bursts moodiness, romantic of weakness, this Othello had a human, and at the same time poetic and lovely, quality, "very much," said Skinner, "like Booth himself." On March ^^ Booth did Payne's Brutus. The grand scene of Rome burning was so realistic that the glow from the stage Ik up the auditorium. At the end one spark was not quenched. It lived on through the night, a live worm of fire lengthening and fattening while the Winter Garden gloomed dark above it and the only permanent occupant, William Stuart, slept in his

apartment at the top. At nine next morning Stuart was shocked awake by the tong-tong of fire engines. He stumbled to the balcony and saw the theater carpenters far below scattering across the stage while flames darted through the openings in
the orchestra pit by which the musicians entered. Smoke was rolling up the stairways, so, snatching on his trousers, he dashed down and out of the doomed building onto the side-

walk, where thousands of

New Yorkers

gaped.

Old Mr. Booth would have loved the spectacle: the uplifted,
"ohing" faces; the curveting horses that pulled the scarlet of water sprayed by hand pumps and almost totally useless against the Goliath of a fire, which roared to the roof, leaving in its wake the charred skeleton of
engines; the waltzing jets

the famous

little playhouse where Jenny Lind had sung, and Rachel had acted; where Edwin Booth had made his debut as

ANOTHER JULIET

211

a star before the metropolis, and the three Booth brothers had matched their talents for the first and last time. Mr. Booth would have been in the thick of things, plying the pumps shoulder to shoulder with the caroling Irish firemen. But Edwin stood on the sidelines looking on. Theater fires were common, and so was the sight of an owner or manager his investment burn. Inside the helplessly watching expiring Winter Garden was Booth's whole professional wardrobe, including stage weapons and jewels, all his new splendors for Richelieu and Othello, as well as other costumes more precious still, for they were historic and hallowed by having belonged
to his father.
II

"Not even

wig or

a pair of tights left,"

Booth said calmly,

smiling faintly.

He had been through so many worse things that a mere loss of property (roughly forty thousand dollars' worth) left him almost indifferent. And he had begun to realize the power that was in him. What was. this loss to one who had the golden touch? "If I live & don't lose my grip in 5 years I'll be rich!"
cate

He would build his own theater! build it like a palace, dediit like a temple. He had tried to make his acting a monuto

ment

Mary; so would

his

new theater be. As at the Winter

Garden, he would give the great plays with distinguished casts in lavish, peerless settings. He felt die power pouring out of him; he had the golden touch. Just before the fire Clarke had sold his interest in the Winter Garden to Booth because he was leaving for England to make' a fresh start in life. They had both been anxious for months
to get rid of Stuart, who was a trouble-breeder. Stuart's policy was good-humoredly and slyly to turn people against one another, including his best friends, with the idea that he was thereby accumulating a reserve of advantage for himself. Booth was finally onto him, having caught him out in some of his double-dealing, like his advising Booth to give all reporters the cold shoulder because "they'd murder their grandmothers

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

for a line of type," then sidling up to them himself to hint "a dull man, who made fun smoothly that Booth was really

of the press."

supervisor

Booth had dreaded a break; he hated to hurt feelings, but now the fire had set him free. "All Booth's mistakes and most of his troubles," moaned William Winter, a head-wagging of his friends' affairs, "resulted from the amiable
weakness with which he sometimes permitted himself to become entangled with paltry, scheming, unworthy people."^ For his new theater Booth needed a new partner. He decided on Richard A. Robertson, a businessman from Boston, "kindly of ordinary taste and meagre enough," Winter granted, "but fitted to be associated with a theater abilities, and in no way
otherwise than, possibly, as a janitor." Robertson had, though, one comfortable gift: he could make could make the mere saying a thing seem as good as doing it, of large sums seem like cash in the pocket. Booth mentioning found this highly encouraging. In proposing the terms of parttheater was to be in his own nership he insisted only that the name and that he should have the option to buy out Robertson at any time. For five years a percentage of the profits would

go

Then Booth would pay Robertson any surneeded to make up Robertson's investment in the project plus and also award him a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. Meanwhile, they figured that the combined costs of the land and
to Robertson.

construction would come to half a million. Booth appointed Harry Magonigle, who was Mary's brother-in-law, to represent him and Robertson, and he put his brother Joseph in as

had fizzled out. around for a good location. The enterMagonigle shopped tainment district was creeping uptown, and he chose a site for the theater on the southeast corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue. It cost one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, which was more than Booth had counted on, and hardly had the earth been turned over when the shovels banged against
treasurer. Joe's medical studies

a kyer of rock; the blasting was hideously expensive. Well, in for a penny Besides, Robertson had promised to contribute
!

ANOTHER JULIET
sound of the money was in his voice. Booth paid down fifty thousand in

213

seventy-five thousand himself immediately, later the same amount again. To be sure, he hadn't done it yet, but the solid
cash, then departed on a strenuous tour to earn the balance, leaving behind some notes of hand signed in blank the amounts to be filled in by his dollar he could spare he sent back to Joe, who partner. Every
it on to Robertson. It was wearing work to build a passed theater this way, not by the simple toil of the hands but by a nightly creative effort and giving out of vital nervous energy.

In Chicago he played at McVicker's opposite Mary McVicker, whose stepfather owned the house. He had seen her here before in 1857, when he had smiled down at the selfwilled little girl who had taken a fancy to him; he had been courting another Mary. At eighteen Mary McVicker was a tiny tag of a woman with a little, sallow, heart-shaped face

and dark hair worn elaborately frizzled. She had beautiful if rather distraught-looking brown eyes, and these she fixed on Booth. Grown up at last, she was on equal terms with him.
She seethed with plans and ambitions. tfy her Irish wit and him sharp sense of fun she pulled Booth out of himself, got to laughing again as sweeter, timider young ladies hadn't been
able to do. Onstage she played a rather crude, vivacious, "western" Ophelia to his Hamlet and Juliet to his Romeo. When he left Chicago she went along as his leading lady. And when in Baltimore he was pinked in the arm during some him to rest swordplay in The Apostate and the doctor ordered a

few

nights,

Mary McVicker was somehow

right there to

nurse him most capably in his cheerless hotel room.

as he could afford it Booth had reimbursed the fanner whose tobacco barn had been burned down Virginia sum was still defairly large during John Wilkes' capture. in John's name in a bank in Montreal; John had visited posited Canada six months before his crime. The bank had advertised for the heirs to claim the money, but Edwin sternly forbade At the entreaty of his any member of the family to touch it.

As soon

214

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

mother, half-childish in her grief ("She seems to have still a all this will prove to be a lingering hope in her heart that he had written to Secretary of War Stanton, begdream"), for custody of what was left of his brother's body, on ging which an exhaustive autopsy had been performed before it was dumped under the dirt floor of the Arsenal. But Stanton had
ignored
his letter.

Booth tried again in September, 1867, writing from Barnum's Hotel in Baltimore. This time his appeal was to General Grant, who had succeeded Stanton as Secretary of War and had once offered to do Booth any service after his rescue of Robert Lincoln. "Sir," Booth addressed Grant, "I now appeal to you on behalf of my heartbroken mother that she may receive the remains of her son. You, Sir, can understand what a consolation it would be to an aged parent to have the privilege
of visiting the grave of her child."

Grant made no reply. There was no shaking off the dominion of that forlorn, defiant spirit whose shell remained in strangers' hands. Since his brother's crime Booth had steadily refused to play in Washington. Baltimore was as near as he would go, and special trains ran between the two cities so that Washington theaterlovers could see him act. It was the odium of John Wilkes' name that had driven Clarke to move to London, where Asia soon joined him. The child that Ask was expecting at the time
of the assassination had turned out to be twins. In the fearful months when Edwin, at Bispham's sane encouragement, was setting down what he remembered of his boyhood (he later destroyed the manuscript in a spasm of disgust) , Asia had gone on doggedly with the memoir of their father that she and John had planned. The writing opened all her wounds, but to finish the work they had begun together was all she could do for
John.

Her worshiping
printed,
stranger,

and soon

I have just finished reading, for the third time, Book. Long years have passed since I saw that form. But your

"Dear Madam:

memoir of Junius Brutus Booth was appeared she had a letter from a a woman, who probably signed herself "M.K."
little

after

it

ANOTHER JULIET

215

every lineament, Word, & every Gesture of that Haunting recollection has been with me still. I remember him well.
.

"Last Winter I went to the Winter Garden wearied of Life (for I have drained the cup of Life's sorrows to the dregs) during the Engagement of your respected Brother. When I

looked upon that Fragile

rest)

Form (which

know

well needed
perse-

when

saw him the Embodiment of Energy &

home determined to overcome any verance, I returned to Obstacle, which Fickle fortune threw in my way. It would Innocent children's eyes light up at the be gratifying to see name of Edwin Booth. Oh that Heaven in its Mercy may Bless

my

my

him with its peace Love & Happiness. He must know that there is one home whose Children are taught to emulate his Gentleness & Goodness & Virtue. Yours Devotedly. . . ." In her published memoir Asia simply painted over the blots on the Booth escutcheon. She conceded that by her father's early misalliance "there was one son who, if alive, is still a resident of London, and of whom we possess no further knowledge." Yet her half-brother had lived for years in Baltimore. She didn't mention her father's divorce. Over his furtive courtship of her mother she threw a gossamer of romance and announced that her father had married her mother in London on January 18, 1821, "at the residence of the Hon. Mrs. Chamwistful tradition bers*" There really was a Mrs. Chambers. in the Booth family may have inspired Asia's claim; possibly her parents did go through some sort of ceremony. To hear Ask tell it, no family life was ever more idyllic than the Booths' in their Maryland hideaway. In her pages every

relative

put

his best foot

forward.

Her

grandfather Richard

Booth

drunk that he couldn't be relied on to the farm work was a picturesque old gentleman, supervise "tall, slender, arrayed in knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, and with snow-white hair wrapt in a queue." Her good-for-nothing uncle Jimmy Mitchell was "an eccentric Scotch Biblomaniac," who sedately spent his time "reading the Bible and writing commentaries on it." Even old Joe, the servant, "swarthy giant of the woods, boasted his lineal descent from a
so often dead

prince."

2l6

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Booth, the head of
this

And Mr.

household,

was

strictly

gentleman-farmer

who

never, his daughter emphasized, sold

of his contempohis vegetables at the Baltimore market as some In Baltimore he was raries were sure they had seen him do. not to smoke on the street and to take the

always scrupulous curb side "when passing or walking with a female." Asia never She alluded to his madness as spoke of her father's drinking.

and "seasons of abstraction." "slight aberrations" There was one stain on the shield she could not wipe away. of all families," she mourned, "secure in domestic love

"We,

and retirement,

are stricken desolate.

is

enwreathed with laurels beloved his bright boy Absalom!'

dishonored "

The name we would have by a son 'his well-

Had Booth bitten off more than he could chew in the theater
he was building? He labored and labored. Othello's rage, the distress of Hamlet were turned on and off until he couldn't but sat up in his hotel bed counting sleep at night for fatigue, the strokes of the city clocks in Toledo or New Orleans, or lay half the states in the hard-won twisting in a train berth while Union flashed by under him; and always the cry from Robertson in New York was for more money, more and faster. Al-

had ready Booth's theater, still a long way from being finished, devoured the half million dollars expected to cover the whole cost, and Robertson had borrowed on the credit of Booth's name. Booth's debts had increased so fast they had a narcotic effect, "would frighten any one," he allowed, "whose bump of 'don't-care-a-tiveness' was less than mine." He was too inept at business, too dazed with work, too tired, and most of the time too far away, to keep a check on Robertson. More than this, he was too busy with the future to care much about the present. All at once his interest in another Mary and the deKcious renewed vision of a wife and fireside had not only shoved the complicated theater enterprise into second place but "everything connected with it," as it seemed
to

him

later,

suddenly "became hateful to me, and

I lived

sort of troubled dream-life, thoroughly disgusted

with

my

ANOTHER JULIET
'hobby/ and altogether indifferent

217

as to the result. I let things

g-" The
five in

the months fled past. Booth was thirtyNovember, 1868. He had been acting nineteen years, during which his style had grown steadily less flamboyant and more natural. The actor had become less to him and his art
cities fled past,

more. "The

fitful power," applauded Lucia Calhoun in the "that dazzled and delighted in great bursts has beCentury, come a diffused strength, which sustains the whole."

Like

all

New

York she expected wonderful

fault in his

things of his

new

theater,

had found only one

Winter Garden

productions, so striking in their scenery and costumes. The supporting company had been "impossible to defend. . . . Surely," she volunteered, "it is not too much to demand of Mr. Booth to insist that the gentleman who plays Richmond

speak the English language; or that Antonio shall not altogether dispense with a pocket handkerchief; or that the nobles and gentlemen in general should look at their parts once or twice before playing; or that Ophelia should be told that she is not a singing chambermaid. If, in the new theatre, he will but give us Shakespeare with an intelligent actor in every the courtiers who stand with folded arms will but be part; if courtiers and not boobies, the world will owe him a debt it will
shall

gladly pay in honor, in praises, in fortune." Booth thought so too. He aimed at bringing together the best casts available. He had already tried to sign the Bohemian

tragedienne Madame Janauschek for the heavies, and when she decided she hadn't time to learn the parts in English he engaged Mrs. D. P. Bowers, who was also first-rate. His leading McVicker and here, right at lady, however, was to be Mary the beginning, his heart overruled his head. Nothing daunted Miss McVicker. She did all the great heroines from Portia to was that "had she Ophelia, and William Winter's comment chosen to play Irish girls in farces, she would have succeeded." And before Booth realized it, the lower ranks of his new
first

company had taken on actors he had made

considerable dead
places for

wood. The very were Dave Anderson and

2l8

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
California,

Willmarth Waller from

both past their primes but

the fondest of old comrades.

They swarmed into his life again his arm and thumping his back in their joy and repumping liefdear old Ted! Then there was Mark Smith, who had acted with his father in Mr. Booth's last performance in New was "Polly" Orleans; Booth made him stage manager. There and also penniDrummond, who was practically doddering and ends as the Physician less, so Booth let him in for such odds and An Old Man, Uncle to in Macbeth, the Priest in Hamlet,
and
a three-line bit that

Juliet, Capulet at the masque in Romeo managers usually left out. For the opening performance he had invited Forrest to pky Othello to his lago. Forrest could have any price he asked, any terms at all. He refused, would have no terms, nothing to do with Booth. He would have been wiser to accept; affairs had not gone well with Forrest. In proportion as Booth's star soared, his own had drooped. In 1865 he had been partly that he go on acting: paralyzed, but his doctor recommended the machine, if stalled, would rust and drop to pieces. Forrest did go on, but fewer and fewer people came to see him act, and those who did come were older and older. It seemed that the young people had never heard of him. Soon even the faith-

ful began to dwindle. Forrest was bewildered. He had clung to the fable that there is a sentimental bond between the public and a star, causing the public to look tenderly on age and infirmity in one who has served it so long.

He resorted

in second-class

to the provinces, began to accept engagements cities, then to play in remote villages that

smaller stars scorned to visit. It was the same story everywhere* The old actor glowered with humiliation at the reports from

the box office. He dreaded his openings, dreaded his first entrance when the puny applause showed the thinness of the house. He searched the local papers for a word of praise and
pasted into his scrapbook, beside the notices of his acting by leading critics belonging to his great days, the silly effusion of some cub reporter on a small-town journal. Attacks of rheumatism wore down his remaining strength.

ANOTHER JULIET
In the peak scene of Damon and Pythias one of his exploits had always been to leap from Pythias* arms up to a scaffold three feet high. Lately it had been necessary to cut the height to two feet, then to one, at last to six inches. There came an

evening when as Forrest tried out his leap just before curtain time everyone onstage saw that he couldn't make it if the height were more than three inches. "Will this do?" asked the stage carpenter, after dislodging a couple of boards. Forrest turned away his head and whispered sadly: "Yes."
Ill

Three stone towers rose over Twenty-third Street and up from the central one shot a flagpole flying a flag with the BOOTH'S THEATER. Into the raising of these glorious legend towers had gone some thousands of hours of Booth's vitality. For the past two years he had acted at least nine months of each
a week, three hours a night. year, six nights that his theater was nearly finished, the dull part over and the time come finally to cast and rehearse, his fanatic

Now

who was becoming

enthusiasm revived with a rush. This didn't escape Robertson, discontented with his lack of real ownerThree weeks before the theater was due to open he wrote ship. Booth a letter demanding plaintively: "Why should I not be a fair owner in this building? Why, Ned, should I not have
. something which I can feel a pride in as much as yourself? own equally together, but if My fine idea is that we should " this cannot be allowed then make it 3/7. Booth made it three-sevenths, admitting that Robertson
.
.

"struck at the proper moment, just as my fire was hottest, I would blowing me to a white heat. To get that theater open have said 'yes,' had he asked for all of it." The theater did open on February 3, 1869, and so did the snow splashed on the long heavens. First rain, then

damp

crocodile of smart carriages that crawled along Twenty-third Street and pulled up, each carriage in turn, at the main entrance. Outside everything glistened: carriage roofs, umbrella

220

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
was orderly and breath-taking.

tops, tall silk hats. Inside all

From both the central and side entrances richly dressed patrons
swarmed into a vast semicircular lobby, walled and paved with
Italian marble. The section of the audience that had seats in the balcony flowed up the marble staircase past Thomas Gould's bust of Junius Brutus Booth in a niche halfway up. Mr. Booth in life had acted in Drury Lane and Covent Garden but never in a theater to compare with this one. This was World magnificence! His marble image looked out on it a little

New

ironically.

William Winter ambled through the blue-ribbon crowd, taking mental notes for his column in the Tribune next day. He saw "many a face that study had paled and thought exalted. Grave judges were there," Winter noted, "and workers in the field of literature, and patient, toiling votaries of science, and artists from their land of dreams. The eyes of beauty, too, shone
there."

The reporter from the World snooped about, picking flaws.

Next day
in his

column he deplored the

defiling of the

imitated marble, and other little lies. . . . All the exterior decoration is as dead as Julius Caesar," carped the World.

by

"imitated

wood and

lobby

The
lighted

horseshoe.

auditorium was as big as a meadow and shaped like a From the ceiling a monster gasolier its

by

electric sparks.

hung,

jets

fan worked

by steam

pressure

freshly gilded cupids and initial B in gold over the doors of the boxes; the busts of Garrick, Talma, Kean, Cooke, and Betterton along the walls and the noble statue of Shakespeare enshrined over the proscenium arch. After Forrest had failed him, Booth had chosen to with

way. There were seats two thousand people, most of whom couldn't as yet be induced to sit down, they were so busy admiring the painted Apollo, god of poetry and music, on the vaulted ceiling; the
for almost

agitated the atmosphere in a stately

Romeo and Juliet as the best vehicle to launch

in

open

York. When the house lights had been dimmed, he slipped out in front of the curtain in a suit of perfectly new

New

Mary McVicker

ANOTHER JULIET

221

evening clothes ("evidently prepared for the occasion," the

Herald whispered to its readers), murmured a stiff little speech of welcome and bowed himself off. The orchestra began to the fringed curtain stole upward and arplay soft strains;
a series of festoons framing the stage, audience sank back into its plush chairs to wait for its and the money's worth. It got what it came for. With a loud alarm and clanging of bells a full hundred young men of the rival houses of Montague and Capulet shot out from the wings and up and down the

ranged

itself artfully in

unusually wide and deep apron, their

chattering a professional them for weeks in the

mdtre

steel blades weaving and des armes had been rehears-

gymnasium upstairs. In the masque ing at the Capulets, which was gorgeously staged, a corps of trained dancers performed. The balcony scene had two balconies. Romeo bounded over the garden wall wearing a yellow satin tunic, a rolling collar of green silk, flowing sleeves, and a pointed hat of silk and solferino velvet with a plume of cock's feathers. When he took his hat off, his blond hair gleamed in the stage moonlight, which also shone on Juliet's form in white satin, leaning on the rail of the lower balcony, her skirt looped with pearls. More pearls were twined around her neck and a tiara of diamonds rested on her streaming, waist-long black
hair.

Boston Theater in the inspired performance of which Mrs. Howe had written that "few who saw it will ever forget it," and which had been one of the exceptional times when the
at the

Many years ago Booth had played Romeo to

another

Mary

part of

Romeo didn't freeze something in him.

actually a

"Whether he was not

good

lover," speculated

Badeau, "or whether he felt a certain delicacy about lovemaking in public, the fact remains that he was always more effective in parts that represent harsh or violent emotions." Scoffed the Herald the day after the grand opening: "Mr. Booth knows as well as we do that he can't play Romeo. He seems almost to writhe under the load of sweet fancies . . . when the face should be lit up with a glow of passion it is

222

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
.

almost funny to see his struggles. . . Feeling the impossibility of expressing with his immobile face the eager impatience of the young lover, Mr. Booth sought the aid of his heels, danced and clogged about the stage. The passage of old Capulet's wall was a bit of harlequin business which brought out the great gymnastic ability of Mr. Booth." Then came the lady's turn. "Miss Mary McVicker, for

Mr. Booth thus gallantly sacrificed himself, we are pained to say is in no way worthy of the sacrifice. She is not a delicate geranium, rising from a Sevres vase, but a strong, with but little artistic training but practical Western woman, a good deal of raw vigor and rude force; and while she can

whom

never

realize the graceful,

buoyant, lovely Juliet of Shakeeffect."

speare's creation, business after marriage

we have no doubt would manage Romeo's

with considerable

actor most applauded was not either of the principals but Edwin Adams, a popular leading man, for his Mercutio.

The

The real hit of the night,

though, was the theater itself. When the drop curtain fell at the end of Act I, it got its own round of applause for the Italian landscape painted on it. The critic for the World fussed that Romeo's and Juliet's costumes didn't "go well" together the colors clashed. And Romeo's blond

she

wig was not becoming; Nature knew what she was doing when made Booth a brunet. But the World praised the scenery
farces.

imported French

"Now

the diamond of poetry

is

set

more

exquisitely than

was even the quartz of prurience,"

gloried the World.

William Winter ended his rapturous review with a pearl of a quotation. While managers like Booth are active, "we can cease," he exulted, "to grieve for 'the good old 'Angels
are bright
still,

" though the brightest jell?

days.'

IV
after the opening Booth, whose life these seemed to the public to be one lived wholly in the days light, a series of happy triumphs, wrote to President Andrew John-

Not two weeks

ANOTHER JULIET

223

son beseeching and imploring for custody of the body of his brother. He begged also that an ancient trunk once belonging to John, now held at the National Hotel under seal of the War Department, be returned to his family. "It may contain relics of the poor misguided boy," Booth wrote, "which would be dear to his sorrowing mother, and of no use to
anyone." This was

and it succeeded. In gloomy Wilkes' remains were exhumed and shipped to secrecy John Baltimore. Edwin could not bring himself to go, but his intrepid mother, with Joseph and Rosalie and a few others who had
his third attempt,

known John, identified the body there in a back room at Weaver the undertaker's on February 17. The black hair appeared to have
lipless

grown riotously; the white teeth grinned in the

face.

is the body of John Wilkes Booth," said Joseph, with rare firmness. He avoided the word "brother." speaking lock of Mrs. Booth sat in a corner with Rose by her side. hair was snipped from the head and given to her, and she moaned as sne blindly and mechanically drew apart the still beautiful strands between her fingers. President Johnson had ordered that no monument should

"Yes, that

flaunt the place

where Lincoln's

assassin lay.

The

suffering

Booths agreed, but they were determined to bury John honorwaited in the undertaker's vault, the ably. While his body bodies of his father and grandfather Richard along with the monument Edwin had raised to Mr. Booth were moved to a

new

burial lot in

Greenmount Cemetery
had
lain for

in Baltimore.

The

over thirty years in at the farm under a shatthe willow-shaded burying ground tered tombstone (shattered with an ax, the legend ran, by Mr. Booth in his frenzy over little Mary Ann's death) were brought to Greenmount so that all the Booths might rest together all dead in his thirteenth year in England. except Henry Byron, On June 26 Mrs. Booth, Edwin, Junius, Rosalie, and Joseph number of old friends were drove openly to Greenmount. on hand, all who could be persuaded. John Wilkes' body in a
remains of the children that

224
fine casket

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
was

carried to the grave on the shoulders of several the loyal blood of the profession ran strong. next to it was a smaller box holding the dust, for Deposited not much more was left, of the three children who had been
actors in

whom

dead before

from

this brother was born. An Episcopal clergyman New York had been called in to read the burial service.

of asking whom he was to bury, and did not find out until he arrived at the cemetery. It was an unlucky oversight. Because he had read the service over Lincoln's murderer, his congregation threw him out.

He had not thought

But the thing was done. The train of events that John Wilkes Booth had set in motion would go on unfolding until time was no more. But this was the end of the man. His still loving mother wailed with despair as her son's body sank into the grave, away from her forever. Her living children, who had
only
lost a brother, tried in

vain to comfort her.

Even when Mary McVicker was still no more than engaged

to Booth, she

was forever in

Doremus had found her hovering there when he called on Booth to discuss a reading by him of Byron's Manfred before
the Philharmonic Society. "Please don't ask Edwin to read Manfred? interposed Mary. "He's already so overtaxed he can't get the sleep he needs." Booth smiled at her and went on making his arrangements. "But suppose Mary doesn't like your pipe?" someone suggested to him before the wedding.

his dressing

room. Dr. R, Ogden

He

"I can't give

up my pipe," he said sofdy. and Mary were married on June 7, 1869,

at the

Mc-

Vickers'
Jersey.

summer home

in fashionable

Long Branch,

New

summer,

little wife," he told a friend at the end of the a quaint, cosy, loveable little body, and we get on famously. She and Edwina are all in all." Booth had loved deeply once. He was through with

"My
"is

passion.

CHAPTER

10

The Worldly Hope

Of now, for ever
Farewell the tranqtdl

mnd; farewell
Act

Othello,

1119

contents scene 3

A RIVAL Hamlet was in New York. Charles Fechthe French actor, was making his American at Niblo's Garden in January, 1870. Fechter's Hamlet, which, shattering tradition, was a beefy blond with reddish-gold hair and a sing-song intonation, had been quite the rage abroad. It was an artichoke among Hamlets; to enjoy it was a sign of cultivated taste. Actudly Fechter hardly understood the role, insisting that Hamlet never put things off but went ahead with so much energy the Ghost had to slow him down, "Do you not recall," chanted Fechter to an interviewer, "the Ghost's words to the Prince in the Queen's closet: *I come to wet thy almost blunted purpose'?" Fechter had confused whet with wet, and never bothered to look up blunted. The blond prince did well in York, but Booth's dark one at his own theater did even better. One thrilled critic urged his readers to "go and hear a madman on Blackwell's Island
ter,

debut

New

226
soliloquize,

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

munes with

and make a point of watching his eyes as he comhimself. Booth has caught the very trick." Booth took Edwina to the Olympic to see the burlesque of himself in the part by the comedian George L. Fox, who in a heavy fur cap and slogged up and down Elsinore ramparts told Ophelia to "get her collar, mittens and arctic overshoes, to a brewery," and when the Ghost ordered him to "swear!"
let

was at school outside New York and happy to have a mother to come home to. Her letters ended with "love and kisses to dear Mania," to "ch&re petite Mama." In February there was an exchange of valentines. "Dear Mama," Edwina wrote, "I was much pleased with the valentine you gave me. the pink is pretty and so are you. from your loving daughter." By Booth's wish Mary had left the stage before their marwere living in a studio apartment above the riage. They and when his late actor's dajr began, Booth had only theater, to walk downstairs to be at work. "His lite was his theater and there he virtually lived," writes Augustus Htou, who was in
Edwina, eight years
old,

out a string of oaths in a richly vibrating voice.

the company.

Raptly supervising the coming into being of one of his great productions, Booth hovered and prowled into the wardrobe room, prop room, armory. He bent over work tables, poked in cupboards, scanned shelves, laid his hand on this, held that up to the light. He talked costumes with his designer; loitered on the paint frame, smoking with the painters, or simply stood with his head high and hands behind him, expansively contemplating the world he had made. Underneath his broad stage was a brick-paved chasm into which an entire scene could be lowered by hydraulic machinery. In his huge scene shop were numbered pieces of the modern box sets, the last word in scenery. He had given over five floors to airy dressing rooms, and there was a pretty greenroom hung with theatrical engravings and framed playbills. On July 4, 1870, while the New York heat beat against the shaded windows of the apartment over the theater, Mary

THE WORLDLY HOPE

227

Booth bore a son. Her pregnancy had lasted a month beyond the normal term. The infant at birth weighed ten pounds, which was much too large for the mother's delicate frame. After an agonizing labor the doctor took the baby with instruments, and in the operation its head was crushed. Little Edgar Booth lived only a few hours. When Mary was recovering from the effect of the anodyne, her terrible sorrow and weakness were "something not to be described/' said
Booth.

While

that other

son that she herself had borne had passed out of life on the day he entered it, with only
after him,
in his love, the

who grew

Mary had

given

Edwin a daughter named

mother to mourn his passing. The child was buried beside Mary Devlin Booth in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Those walking by and reading carelessly the inscription on the stone over his grave would be sure to take him for the first wife's son.
his

His mother's small face tightened with misery. Unsuspected by her husband and stepdaughter, a bitter rage began to build
in her.

Booth's Theater this

fall

starred Jefferson in

Rip Van

Winkle,
tour,

who jammed in the crowds, while Booth, away on did likewise. He was fighting to reduce the mortgage
dollars,

over a hundred thousand bucket to what he owed.

year had been was a drop in the From New York Robertson wrote as usual screaming for more money. Booth sent him back checks to the amounts of three thousand, five thousand, seven
his theater. Box-office profits for the first

on

but

this

thousand, to be sucked
is

away like dew in the sun. "William!" he scribbled desperately to Bispham, "when that pile of granite

paid for, I'll retire." Jefferson in Rip ran from the middle of August to early January five fat months, and yet in spite of them the profits for the second year were only eighty-five thousand. Robertson began to wail that Booth's devotion to "high art" was losing them money, and to pull for "livelier shows and bigger names." Booth was willing to try what strong names would do, but

228
it

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
stars,

would be expensive he warned

(all

half-baked

his partner because "all these such as Barrett, Adams, and even Wallack

and Davenport
per week
. . .

their

excellent in the stock) require their $300 names to be at the head of the bill, and in

the largest letters, to say nothing of declining to play seconds to each other. . . I will try Barrett and Adams and see what can be done. ... If we can make these damned idiots pull together, I don't care what we pay them." To meet the call for more popular plays he revived Richelieu, a perennial draw because of its exciting story and melo.

dramatic passages in which Booth still let go with everything he had; his audiences would have felt cheated otherwise. Most purple and most famous was the Curse of Rome speech. People swore that as he delivered it Booth grew seven feet tall

They were
hearsed.

A young actress,

right.

He

did,

with him, has given away

artful illusion endlessly reKitty Molony, who later appeared his secret: it lay in the

by an

timing.

Under a splash of light the scarlet-robed Cardinal shelters his ward Julie in her gleaming bridal dress from a shadowy horde of black-velvet enemies. "Mark where she stands!" he thunders,

The awful

circle of

"around her form I draw our solemn Church!*'

As he began to speak Booth plucked back with his left hand the ermine-bordered sleeve that fell over his right, with which he traced an imaginary circle around the
girL

And on
I

Set but a foot within that holy ground,

thy head yea, though launch the curse of Rome!

it

wore a crown

On "Rome" he whipped his right hand high over his head with two fingers raised and in the same instant lifted himself on
hidden by the train of his robe. as Booth rose, all the others abased themselves: Julie, Father Joseph, and the courtiers sank to their knees and bowed to the floor
tiptoe, his feet

And

before the lurid figure of the Church triumphant.

THE WORLDLY HOPE

229

Laurence Hutton, who was an avid playgoer, remembered hanging about in the wing one evening with Booth during
Richelieu.

Away across

the stage they could see Julie waiting

at the opposite entrance. Booth, puffing

on a meerschaum,

pointed out to Hutton the greasy white paint with which she had plastered her neck and shoulders. "It she gets any of that her black and blue." stuff on my new red cloak I'll pinch He heard the cue. "Don't let my pipe go out!" Hutton found himself holding the awkward thing while Booth flowed
majestically onstage. Julie fluttered into his arms; sure enough, she smeared him and he made a face over her shoulder at

Hutton.
soared.

the Curse of Rome began. The actor's voice Suddenly the watcher in the wing became conscious that he had taken off his hat and his legs were shaking. "I forgot all the tomfoolery we had been indulging in," Hutton marveled. "I forgot Booth's pipe and my promise re-

Then

I had been a habitual theatergoer all was a Protestant heretic, and that it was my nothing but stage-play. I forgot everything except that I was

garding

it;

forgot that

life; I forgot that I

standing in the presence of the great, visible head of the Catholic religion in France, and that I was ready to drop on my knees with the rest of them."

him.

The more Booth succeeded, the more some people hated The jilted Stuart had begun a whispering campaign. At

least half the spiteful stories about Booth that crawled into print had been started by Stuart. There were jokes, too. Booth stood about five feet, seven inches, and a wit suggested he

ought to hire Tom Thumb, the midget, for Macduff the next time he played Macbeth. His early drinking gave the enemy an another handle. Five days after his new Richelieu
opened,
article

was published by a man named John Moray describing Booth in the same pky in Cincinnati in 1 860. Moray recollected that he had met the stage manager in the street that long-ago morning and had asked him solicitously if the young actor were "likely to draw." and whiskey alone," the manager gram"If he'll leave

230

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
but
his

bled, "he'll do well enough. He's not a great actor, father's name would pull him through." said Moray, "isn't he studious?"

"Why,"

"Gas!" snorted the manager. "Not one of old Booth's boys but hates a book as much as he loves a bottle."

That night in the theater after a long restless delay the curtain was at last signaled up, "and there on the stage," recalled

Moray with relish, "sat the son of Junius, the brother of Wilkes,

who by

and I am ashamed to add his dinner along with it. He tried hard to recover himself, commenced saying that he had 'found Franze rend dassunder and lu-lu-lu-lumnuss wings,' and staggered about the stage. The curtain fell; the manager came out
to say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we advertised Mr. Booth and we have shown him to you. are sorry his beastly habits have led to your disappointment. Your money will be returned " at the door.'

managed "They had opened the flats on the second scene when Booth was discovered actively engaged in throwing up his situation

tombstone alternately standing on to make a pretty good thing of it.

the

of each has

We

II

Now that he had his own theater there was always a conflict
Booth between what he wanted to do and what was exWhen some poor devil, pathetically spruce, cringed or swaggered into his office and bravely asked for a part, it took a
in
pedient.

heart harder than his to turn the old-timer off without a promise of some kind of help. Lurking at the back of his mind was the vagabond's inkling that some day, by the whirligig of Fate, the tables might turn. Outside, too, he had regular petitioners. To a struggling

who had appealed for a loan, he re"I send a check here for $1000 of those damplied promptly: nable can't-get-along-without-'ems, and in a week hence will let you have another. Will a week be time
artist, Jervis

McEntee,

McEntee was neurotic and

enough?"

overconscientious.

boy/' Booth wrote again soothingly, "you

"My

dear

let this little affair

THE WORLDLY HOPE

trouble

231

you too much, I do not require any interest that's all bosh. Don't think of the thing a moment." But the troubles of a manager! Booth supervised everything, standing onstage before the curtain rose while the grips staghim and confusion raged around, but oh, the ingered past competence! And to be the star too who must carry the show. Often he blazed with anger and cursed a full minute long at the
dundering fools

who had spoiled his scene "a prod at their was what they needed. Once he grabbed a book and bums" hurled it at a super who stood gawking in the wing in plain view of the audience. Every time he all but begged pardon five
later.

minutes

During intermissions he saw visitors in a little parlor off his dressing room, sitting in state in a gilt armchair drawing on his meerschaum or a cigar. His diminutive wife, modishly dressed, curled, and bejeweled, received with him. Like Mary Devlin, she was concentrating absolutely on her husband's career. When Dr. Osgood, who had married Booth and his first Mary, wrote to ask for tickets to a performance, Booth, after answering that he would be pleased to be of service, volunteered in words that would have been outrageous to him a few years be"and be pleased to introduce my wife, who is the counfore terpart of that dear angel you blessed on our wedding day."

He

invited Dr.

Osgood

men have trod the unhallowed ground

to take a peep." He had had a letter

to visit backstage. "Several clergyso you needn't hesitate

from another "Reverend," a stranger to him, inquired cautiously if there were a back door to Booth's through which he could slip in after the lights were

who

down

because his parishioners mightn't like his being there. Booth's whole background had bred in him a longing for what was decent and respected. All that was best in him, all
that

theater

was purest, most aspiring to good, had gone into his and was behind the reply he gave the fearful clergy-

man. "There

is no door in my theater," Booth wrote back, which God cannot see." "through

232

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
troubles of a manager!

The
to give

Edwin Adams and Lawrence Barrett, who had each in turn been his leading support, a chance to star. Each time he did he lost money, on Ned Adams in Narcisse, and this spring, The Winter's Tale, 1871, on Barrett in three productions: with Barrett as Leontes, and two modern plays. And Barrett
was becoming a problem.
had been something of a problem for the past ten years* As far back as 1860, when he was the Boston Museum, he had tried to touch acting in stock at Booth for money and influence. "You say in your letter," " a friend who Booth had then answered the plea for a loan, he will.' Larry, my boy, if those words came can assist me if from your heart they should have stood thus, 'who trill assist "
c

Booth had gone out of

his

way

He

me if he
Irish

can?

mother had taken in washing. His father was an was not Barrett but immigrant whose name, rumor had it, Their son had fought so desperately to improve Brannigan. himself that he could take nothing lightly, always had a chip on his shoulder. His face with its craggy Celtic cheekbones and bulging forehead looked like a monk's, but the hunger in his unhappy eyes was not for God. Fate was unjust, for Booth, who had been born to fame, could have been happy if the world had never heard of him, and here was Barrett whose unique desire was to be recognized by the world as a great, a great
Barrett's

actor.

For the season of 1870 to 1871 Booth had offered Barrett a in his company as leading man at a weekly salary of a Elace undred and fifty dollars. And when Barrett hesitated to accept a position that was less than the very top, Booth reminded him gently: "How many old and disappointed actors do we know who now curse their 'pride' which prevented them from
'stooping' just a little?"

With an ill grace Barrett consented to come, but demanded a salary of two hundred and fifty, which was more than Booth could easily afford. Alas for ambition unsupported by what Booth called "that lucky knack of drawing dollars." Intense and really interesting actor though he was, Barrett couldn't

THE WORLDLY HOPE

draw.

233

When at the end of the spring Booth generously starred

The Winter's Tale and The Man of Airlie, the public away in such droves that the theater lost almost twenty
dollars.

him

in

stayed

thousand

Booth was already immersed in next winter's plans, Julius Caesar on a grand scale was to open in December with himself as Brutus, Barrett as Cassius, and Adams as Mark Antony. He had agreed to pay Barrett four hundred a week though this was a drain on him, especially since the recent flop proved that Barrett's name brought almost no cash to the house. Still, as he had said to Robertson: "If we can make these damned idiots pull together, I don't care what we pay them."

Now, diplomatically, he hinted to Barrett: "The only trouble will be your (and, I presume, Adams' also) wish to be first on the bill."
The name EDWIN BOOTH would
But directly below would
LAWRENCE BARRETT
it

of course head the bill

read

as Cassius

EDWIN ADAMS

as

Mark Antony

or the other way around? It was a hideously nice question. "He may not care about it," Booth coaxed Barrett. "But if he sticks shy you must remember not only that these little trifles are of no earthly account outside the greenroom, but that your salary will doubtless be much larger than his. ... That last point

must be kept secret." His autumn season opened with the kitten-faced Lotta Crabtree in Little Nell, a choice of star and play that was a distinct sop to Robertson. Minstrelsy was Lotta's gift. In all her parts she played the banjo, danced a clog or breakdown. She was not quite at home in a theater like Booth's. People were not used to going there to see her, and her spotty business lost the management some two hundred dollars a week for six weeks.
Robertson began to nag again that his partner's standards were too "highbrow." He was ready, he said, to buy out Booth's interest. When he was sole owner of the theater he would make it into a variety house "I appreciate your artistic

2J4
feeling, 1117

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
boy.
I

can't expect

you to stoop

to that; but it

won't make any difference to me, as a business man." Booth instantly offered to buy out Robertson.

An acof Robertson's countant was called in to calculate the amount interest. But the precise amount was impossible to fix because the theater treasurer, the muddle-headed Joseph Booth, had somehow mixed up the costs of construction of the theater with the production figures for Romeo and Juliet and
for Othello, the second play produced. The wild-eyed expert Robertson's interest, which originally had finally approximated Booth found a free gift from Booth to his partner. been

Now

back for two hundred and forty thousand dollars. He scraped the sum together. Something else brought to light in the accounting was that Robertson, for all his cozy talk of money, seemed never to have put a single solid dollar
himself buying
it

into the theater.

More than ever, now that he was master on his own stage, Booth's desk boiled with letters, all of them asking for something. Everyone had some favor that only Booth could grant. An admirer named Miss S. Levin Dilkes wished an inscribed photograph, offered to pay if it could be taken especially for her "I would be willing that it should cost $10." "Sir!" commenced a letter from a would-be playwright, submitting a manuscript called The Gipsy's Revenge, "I am
true. Does that prove that I have no wit no no imagination? I am poor. Have I for that to die intelligence from misery and despair? No! I wUl not give up before having
'tis

Unknown

ray of hope." Sir," began a milder request from the mother of Garrie Davidson, the theater errand boy; "my son young Gennaro Garrison Davidson his working at your Theater i wish you would keepe a watchful eye on him that he don't forme any Bad ashoates he as allways been a very good boy to Me but New York his so ful of temtations." An important message came in from Clarke in London, who sent word the Lyceum Theater there was temporarily free and
exhausted the
last

"Dear

THE WORLDLY HOPE

235

proposed that he and Booth lease it jointly. Here was Booth's chance to control a first-rate house in London in which he could act regularly. He was tempted. But the Lyceum had the name of being an unlucky house. And Booth hated decisions. He let this one drift, and while he hesitated a more enterprising, less superstitious manager, H. L. Bateman, and his wife, who had been Sidney Cowell, Mrs. Sam CowelPs
daughter, snapped up the lease. It was a fatal hesitation. Henry Irving, the English actor, who since 1861, when he supported Booth in Manchester, had bided his time, making every day

count toward his advancement, persuaded Bateman to produce The Bells in which Irving acted Mathias and scored his star had been born first overwhelming metropolitan hit.

whose angular shadow was

from ten

to

fall

across Booth's path.

Late in September the great Charlotte Cushman emerged years' retirement to appear at Booth's as Lady MacQueen Katharine in Shakespeare's Henry VIII and Meg beth, Merrilies. This last role was her sure money-maker. Actors playing with her these days whispered that as she gave her final death shriek in the part, she pounded her breast, which was known to be on fire with cancer, so as to make her famous cry one of real agony. Cushman brought in money, but the profits were wiped out by the next star, John E. Owens, a dear fellow and a topnotch comedian of the old school, but no longer quite able to hold his own with the fashionable opera season running full tilt are fearful," Booth confessed to against him. "My expenses letter. "I have only made thus far $49 dollars this Barrett in a season losing all & more on Owens than I made on Cushman." He was writing to reopen the delicate subject of names and all modesty, print for Julius Caesar. Although he alluded to it in there was no denying what the real capital of Booth's Theater was. "I think it is definitely proved that the 'draught' to this house lies in my name, and it follows that greater prominence should be given to the article that sells best. ... If by doing what no other 'star' has done or will do, I accustom the rabble's eye to a constant view of my name made much less prominent

236
than formerly
attractive

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
by
a combination of others
I

(theatrically speaking)

perhaps not so shall soon destroy the

my own." power Barrett must lump the idea that from now on if he played at Booth's he would play second fiddle. Booth could no longer of starring those whom no one came to see. afford the
of

was surely demonstrated last season that much were liked by the intellectual few your name had no
"It

luxury

as

you

attrac-

tion for the multitude.

My real desire has always been to

type but, alas! it cannot be humbug & large letters have got such a firm hold upon the age we live in that I begin to fear all my dreams of high-art, refinement & delicacy in our profession are Utopian; dreams & 'with the time since I am nothing more. I must, I find, live

do away altogether with

'star'

doomed

to live in

it,

and must necessarily do

all this

as others

do

look out for No. i. I hate to say rotten truth." feeling it, but it is a

I hate

myself for

Julius Caesar opened on Christmas night, 187 1. Booth began as Brutus, a part he hadn't done since the benefit with his two masterbrothers. It was one of the roles he was born to do.

"A

in the April Fine Arts piece!" exclaimed Laura Keene, writing of the mature performance of this actor with whom she used to quarrel in days so far off now and themselves such tiny figures in them. She called attention to his Brutus' "tender love for Portia, his sorrow at her death, and the grief-laden meaning he gives to the short phrase:

Speak no more of her

so indifferent in word, so affecting in delivery." When the toga'd Barrett stalked into the Forum he was Cassius to the core, Cassius whether he would or no, for the same nature was in him. He too was the lean and hungry one: gloomy,
combative, suspicious, intellectual, grudging in tendency, yet capable of generous deeds and with a streak of nobility. In February Junius Booth took Barrett's place. Junius had turned fifty; his figure had thickened like his father's until

THE WORLDLY HOPE

237

Caesar's description of Cassius as "lean and hungry" was a worse fit than ever on him. He had copied a piece of business from his father in the part, which was to strut with

heavy

ostentation right across the murdered Caesar's head. Edwin wrote to Barrett, who had quitted the company, that "June's Cassius was the gayest old burlesque you ever saw by Jove!
it

was funny!"

Early in March Booth moved into Cassius and William Creswick, a reliable if shadowy player, took over Brutus. Negotiations with Adams to be Antony had fallen through. For the first weeks Antony was done by Frank Bangs, of whose performance William Winter murmured that it was "efficient." "Bangs," added Winter, "considered it to be sublime." On March 1 1 Booth played Antony. Creswick shifted into
tried Brutus. Booth's acting of the three the run; his fans wanted to see him principal parts prolonged in all three. "In all of them," decided Winter, "he excelled his
Cassius,

and Bangs

competitors as to the element of sympathy. That was an attribute peculiar to Booth." "In Mark Antony," said Laura Keene, "Mr. Booth rose out of himself." What stirred her most was the wonderful oration over Caesar's body, "its art, its elocution, tact and subtle management of the crowd, with the quicker and quicker delivery, till it swelled to a torrent of words; finally, the leap from the tribune (a trick, but a clever trick), and his thunderous denunciation of the traitors. . . . The house was swept away.'

Booth had set his

--

because it was grander than the city of Julius. The scene of the Forum was all blue sky, white marble and a sense of space. In the Senate Chamber a curving backdrop spectacularly reproduced G6r6me's painting of Caesar's murder, showing tier on tier of stone benches rising on three aides above a dais.
"Scene-painter's drama!" was what the failing Edwin Forrest called the production to Barrett soon after the opening. For-

had no patience with fancy scenery. He remembered his youth, when an actor created the illusion called for with little more to help him than his voice and body. There were giants
rest

238

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
it, it

in those days when, as Forrest liked to put necessary to be an actor!

was

absolutely

any accessories. Lately Forrest had proved himself superior had played Lear in New York, the last engagement King of his life there, with poor support and dingy settings, yet never had he acted the part more movingly. As he slowly advanced onstage, inclining his head to the faint applause from the half-filled benches, he made such a figure of ruined majesty that the handful of spectators could hardly keep their tears back. The critics no longer scoffed at him. "He is the King Lear of the American stage/' declared one. "He gave to

to

He

he had, and now they have have crowned a new king, before whom They they bow, and 'the old man eloquent' is cheered by few voices." At last Forrest saw clearly that he was discrowned. After one neglected performance a reporter cried to him: "Mr. Forrest, I never in my life saw you play Lear so well as you did
his children, the public, all that

deserted him.

tonight!" The old actor rose.

retorted.

He drew

"What do you mean,

sir? I

himself up. "Play Lear?" he do not play Lear. I play

if

Hamlet, Richard, Shylock, Virginius, God, sir, I am Lear!"

ffl

you

please,

but by

Central Park Lake froze over this winter. Booth wrote to "I've been learning to skate, but I make a poor 'foot' at it. When I was a little boy I had no opportunity to learn the different games and sports of childhood, for I was traveling most of the time. . . . You must learn." There was not much time for skating now. Although Julius Caesar seemed from the front to run on greased wheels, in the regions backstage the actors jockeyed and intrigued, each one beating his ego like a tom-tom. Booth labored to keep the peace, to be all things to all people. He confided to Barrett that "Mark Antony has ruined Bangs. He wants to star. ... I expect trouble with him. . . . Davenport is insulted because I

Edwina, shut away at school:

THE WORLDLY HOPE

.

239

he's very indig with told him he wouldn't draw as a star . . me." This was E. L. Davenport. Booth took the production to Philadelphia after suspending another player. But the man he put into Bangs for a tiff with he does the bus. as well as Bangs could part, "though

Bangs'

have done

it

got

rats

from

my press-friends."
his

Another actor

who reached Philadelphia on Monday mornname

advertised in small

over Cassius found ing to take

wrote Booth an insulting letter, and huffed out of the type, on the train he had arrived in. A tyro was moved into his city there was a two-night old novice for Antony. Booth was place; d the the Brutus. "Great G! what a performance! It d Ah! well, the result was I had to let up on Bangs/' . play. He mused: "It's a very delicate thing to handle this self.
.

esteem."

He was planning for next fall, and he had bad news to break to Barrett. "Now, my boy, I am going to hit you square in the
eye.

...

It is

absolutely necessary that

attraction

should secure the

strongest paying losses. . . . Until the cards endeavor to redeem a little of rent I have not made a penny over gran d revival of 'Caesar'

& by filling my season with the sure

my

my

this

season

& with

its

kept

my

head above

fearful expenses it has not more than the surface. ... It is not as tho'

my
the

debts were paid

&

stood free to serve a friend

& damn

&

do it. ... I must tell you expense! I cannot I cannot give you time next season." bitter truth

at once the plain

Barrett took this fairly well. The real rift between him and Booth came the next winter when word flew south along the to Orleans, where Barrett was acting, that

grapevine

New

historical play called MarlborBarrett panted for the tide role of the military Duke. ough. When Booth fixed his choice elsewhere, Barrett accused Booth

Sooth was about to put on a

of breaking an engagement with him. His tone was irritable with his chronic grievance, and Booth
thrust back sharply:

"Your accusation

is

utterly false

and you

well

know it.

My

dislike to

causes say unpleasant things

240
me,
this

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

I know, to convey sometimes a wrong impression, and weakness of mine doubtless led you to suppose yourself so grossly charged engaged by me, but now since you have me with an act I have not committed ... I will no longer be considerate or 'mealy-mouthed' but talk blunt business facts to those who have proved to be unyou. I cannot afford to star profitable to me."

Besides

this,

"You are physically so unsuited to the character

of Marlborough," wrote Booth, "that I regarded your proposition to perform it as simply absurd." It was this final adjective that cut most cruelly. When Barrett answered, which he did at once, on New Year's Day, 1873, his professional pride was oozing blood. "My dear Sir," he began, "it may not be unprofessional in your eyes to say to an artist that his desire to perform any character is 'simply absurd' but it is a word I choose to use and if the atmosphere in which you breathe were not made too of your dependents and hired agents, you dense by the flattery be able to hear the same things said of yourself. might perhaps . . . ]N o man ever yet attained greatness permanently by

making everybody

else

pigmies and

you

will be

no exception.

... I have stood by your side and nave suffered, I think, not much by the comparison. "I am anxious mat you should understand how deeply and
you have estranged the friendship of one who not to be despised. I shall not accept the humble role you allocate to me. If you really stand at the head of my Profession then you only are my compeer . and when Time gives his judgment, I may not after all be so very far behind your illustrious self, whom I care now as little to see or hear from as I was once anxious and delighted. Your silence will please me better than any reply to this." sight of Booth's face as he read would have pleased Barrett best of all. Booth scrawled furiously across the page: "Preserve this as a souvenir of the blackest ingratitude." It was like the famous quarrel they had acted so often when the harassed Brutus cries,
unnecessarily
at least
is
. .

THE WORLDLY HOPE

"Away,
slight

241

man!"

And the stung

a

Cassius answers,

O ye gods!

ye gods! Must

endure

all

this?"

no time to make up for lost time. But that drag on forever. It was one things night in February or early March, 1873, that Booth instructed Game Davidson, who did the odd jobs, to wake him up in his apartment at three in the morning.
skating,

No time for

there are some

Many
still

years later Garrie Davidson, an old

man now who

odd jobs in theaters, told everything that had hapon that eerie, dark early-morning to Otis Skinner, who pened
did

gave the story to the world.

stole

Snow was falling down together

thick outside

when Booth and

room under

into the furnace

Garrie the stage.

Obeying orders, Garrie lighted a gas jet, then stoked the fire. Over in one corner waited a large trunx tied around with ropes.
Still at Booth's direction, Garrie cut the ropes with an ax and knocked the lid off, letting out a powerful smell of camphor. They saw some wigs and swords lying on top and packed

underneath a heap of tarnished costumes. It was like a dream to Garrie Davidson: the hour, the place, the mysterious business to be done. Down in the heart of the sleeping theater he stood at attention in front of the furnace fire that scorched his face every time he stuffed into it one of the costumes silently handed him by Booth. In silence ("It was awful to watch him," said Garrie) Booth shook out each piece and studied it, occasionally exposing the initials J.W.B. inked on some of the linings. There was a Hamlet hauberk sewn with jet beads, a satin waistcoat worn for Claude Melnotte, Mark Antony's toga, and a robe for Othello made of Indian shawls, gossamer-nne. At last he pulled out of the depths a purple velvet tunic and an armhole cloak trimmed with ermine, wrinkled and shabby. He sat down on the edge of the trunk and to the embarrassed boy's horror began to cry.

"My

father's,"

Booth

said. "6arrie, this

was

my

father's

242
Richard

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
III dress.

He wore

it

in

Boston on the

first

night I

went on the

stage as Tressel."

Carrie asked in a subdued voice: "Don't you think you ought

to save that, Mr. Booth?"

But Booth was on his feet again. "No," he said, "put it in with the others/' and he snatched the long-handled poker and
stirred the disintegrating mass himself. everything in the trunk was gone,

Finally

even two daggers

thrown into the fire to melt, a few paste jewels, and a pair of women's satin slippers that had lain at the bottom. It was
almost dawn. Booth motioned to Garrie to chop

up the

trunk.

The splintered boards and the ropes were tossed onto the flames.
Booth looked searchingly around, then told the boy to shut the
furnace door. "That's all We'll go now."

IV
That things were not well with Booth's Theater was known in greenrooms all over York. Bispham had heard the in business circles outside the gossip profession. Box-office

New

receipts even of a hit like Julius Caesar could barely keep abreast of the cost of producing plays as sumptuously as

on producing them. Harry Magonigle, one of elbow whose advice was worth anything, was always imploring him to cut down expenses, especially where the identical effect could be got for less money, but Booth only smiled with the shining, obstinate look of one who sees a
insisted

Booth
the

few

at his

vision.

The theater's financial basis had been shaky from the first. The original building costs had been let grow much too large.
was going up, Robertson, apparently not with a dime himself, had raised the money needed what Booth faithfully sent him) through short loans (beyond on the credit of Booth's name. Instead of one long-term mortgage, which would have been easier to carry, Booth and Robertson had taken out several short ones at killingly high
theater

While the

chipping in

rates.

There was no system, or plan adopted, only a scramble

THE WORLDLY HOPE

243

from month to month to make ends meet. Booth was all alone in deep waters now. He worriedly consulted Junius, who offered to lease and manage the theater for five years, thus freeing Ted to act in the provinces where the real gold lay. Booth started out, leaving Junius in charge. But the brothers had no luck. Just when there was stark need that business should be good, the panic of 1873 clapped down on the general economy. Financial houses empires, even began to crumble and theater audiences naturally fell off. Junius borrowed money. He flaunted star after star to keep Booth's Theater from turning its lights out. Unfortunately, his main was Tommaso Salvini, the Italian tragedian, doing opposition
a brutal, exciting Othello at the Academy of Music. This was Salvini's American debut. He was someone new, and those who had any money left to spend on the theater were spending it on him. Salvini was a man towering and leonine, almost fat, who
his white teeth in smiles of the south and breathed out physical charm like a hot wind. His Othello made New York gasp. "Revolting!'' Clara Morris found it. "When Othello entered," she writes, "and fiercely swept into his swarthy arms the pale loveliness of Desdemona, 'twas like a tiger's spring upon His gloating eyes burned with the mere lust of a lamb. * . the 'sooty Moor' for that white creature." In the scene of Desdemona's murder Salvini would hurl him.

showed

self

on Signora Piamonti, his leading lady (no American actress would play opposite him), swing her over his head, stride

across to die wide, low, cushioned bed, suggestive of the seit and himself on top of her, raglio, then crash her down on

she writhing, he grunting and snarling. William Winter was nauseated. "Plebeian! Carnal!" he called the exhibition, and solemnly reminded his readers in

the Tribune that

"Edwin Booth's

learnedly accurate, steadily

poetic and brilliantly pictorial setting of this play remains the best, and by far the best, that this public has ever seen." But this public was perverse. After reading Winter k flocked
to see Salvini.

244

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Next, without warning, all Booth's creditors swooped down on him at once with hard, frightened faces. The panic had hurt them too. They must have their money from him. They threatened to foreclose the mortgages. It was utterly beyond Booth's power to pay them. In desperation he hired a lawyer named T. J. Baraett to examine his finances and advise him what to do. He had plently of trained and reliable friends Bispham was one of them who would have been eager to help. He turned to Barnett instead. He had met the man a comparatively short time ago through a gushing letter Barnett had sent him praisin Barnett's hands. ing his acting. Booth now put all his affairs Barnett was a talker, like Robertson. Faced with the mess his client had made of things, he was philosophical. "All experience must be bought," he prated. "It is the rudder of life and is often its best treasure. Youth don't listen, won't heed. When the blood burns and hope is high and ambition strong, the gallant mind, restless as the wind and aspiring as the eagle, sweeps to its point, reckless as impulse itself." Booth had hoped Barnett could sell the theater. After eight weeks of busy ineffectiveness Barnett proposed what amounted to giving it away. On November 12 the property into which Booth's dreams and best strength had gone was conveyed "for no consideration" to a man named dark Bell, who was to protect and carry it until it could be sold. On January 26, 1 874, Booth, nudged again by Barnett, filed a petition of voluntary bankruptcy in the United States District Court. The newspapers estimated his liabilities at about two hundred thousand dollars. His assets, which were also published, were valued at something under ten thousand. They included his

wife's jewelry,

all his

furniture, books, paintings, chandeliers,

professional costumes and one pair of dumbbells.

Booth had been forty on his last and a bankbirthday, forty His friends wrote to him after the fiasco was known, as rupt. they had done in other bad times. "Your letter," he answered the Jervis McEntee, "so full of what is beyond all price

THE WORLDLY HOPE

genuine sympathy of sound and solid friendship
great
consolation."
to Bispham:

245
gives

me

And

the heaviest
Critics

blow

who disliked Booth brayed with triumph to see him down. The New York Times told him what in its brought had been wrong with his theater: "Such a opinion company the most assiduous searching from Podunk at the east as only
to Peoria at the west could ever have collected. 'sticks' any star would shine!"

"My dear boy. my life has felt."

This

is

by no means

Among

such

"Booth's Theater," smirked the Philadelphia Press, "has been the tomb of his fortunes and his renown. Mr. Booth did, it is true, shine in it to advantage, but it was as a brass tack does on an old-fashioned hair trunk. His company was one of the worst ever gathered together in this country. . . . Mr. Booth
failed,

of course."

There was no "of course." Booth called himself resigned, yet the ignominious failure wormed in him. This was a very different thing from the accidental burning of the Winter Garden, because bitterest of all was his dim recognition that his theater
need never have
that even
failed if its business

when

the crash came

it

could

had been handled better, still have been saved

for

witted Barnett.
ifs.

him if he had engaged an able lawyer instead of the woollyHe could have climbed to success on a ladder of Something he had learned, the hard way: "If ever I control

another theater I shall subdue the painter & costumer & spend the money, thrown away on them, for good plays & actors." McVicker, a canny theater manager, believed Booth's <c Theater could have been bonded for all the indebtedness . . . such was its true value . . . Had Booth's financial affairs," McVicker pursued, "been conducted with anything like the

have ability he displayed in artistic matters, only success would been the result; unfortunately, he was of a confiding nature."

"He was
that

a dreamer," writes Winter. "The temperament made him fine in Hamlet unfitted him for practical affairs.
part of his
life I

... In every

saw die operation of Hamlet's

246

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

propensity to view all things as transitory and immaterial, and to let everything drift." It was this strain that had tempted Booth's father to seek refuge from the sham of the stage in a lonely lighthouse where he could meditate on what was real. To father and son, in their brooding on a world elsewhere, the world they lived in grew shadowy. The spur of fame that drove other men on was dulled and blunted. Everything passes. "My father ever seemed," said Booth and he spoke for * ir as well, "to muse with Omar Khayyam, thus:
"

The worldly hope men

Turns
ashes

set their hearts

upon

or

Like snow upon Lighting a little hour or

prospers; and anon, the desert's dusty face,

it

two

is

gone."

PART

SIX

CHAPTER

II

Peace and Quiet

Say,
is

And what

my

kingdom

lost?

why,

'twas

my

care;

loss is it to

be rid of care? King Richard II, Act III, scene 2

BOOTH spent the summer of 1874 with Mary and Edwina in a little retired house called Cedar Cliff
at

Cos Cob, Connecticut.

He

had

his

long actor's

nervous indigestion eased away. He lay sunk in a hammock outdoors in the shade and smoked. One afternon a tall Yale student trudged over through the heat to put a momentous question to die great actor. Ought he to go on the stage? "Young man, I wouldn't," said Booth. "It's a dog's life." The boy looked unconvinced; he had the fever badly. His

hair cropped close to his head in the short "warrior cut" that was always his first luxury on vacation. His chronic

name was William

Gillette.

Away in the steaming city the lawyers wrangled over Booth's ruined enterprise. It was like the funeral of an old friend held
in another country, too far away to hurt much. But Booth came across the first fawning letter he had ever had from T. J.

Barnett and his pencil bit into the paper as he scrawled along the envelope: "First letter I remember to have received from
249

2j
this

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
damned scoundrel
would
to

God

it

had been the

last."

The summer could have been pleasant even for a bankrupt was behaving very oddly. Her nerves were except that Mary
all

on edge, and she took out most of her irritability on Edwina, who in winter was usually away at school. Ever since her mar-

riage

conscientiously to school entertainments and during holidays had heard her little stepdaughter say her tucked her in bed at night, and read Dickens to her. prayers, But as Edwina grew closer to being a woman she was becomto her father as he to her, rapturing as passionately devoted of tobacco clinging to the letters he ously sniffed the smell it sent" her at school brought him nearer to her and at home ardent little services, to wake him from his ran to do him

Mary had gone

the tea that was all he took before nap every afternoon and brew the theater. She and her father had a special bond leaving for in their united quiet devotion to an idealized, angel figure (a

Booth, a legend to Edwina) until Mary McVicker shaken by a fury she could not control, shrilly forbade Booth, Mary Devlin's name to be spoken in her hearing. Besides his own debts Booth had Robertson's to pay. When he bought Robertson out he had assumed all outstanding liabilities. Back on the road this fall on a long tour aimed at large he plugged away doggedly "a galley slave chained profits, to the oar . . . something always prevents my getting free.'* At the turn of the year Booth's Theater was surrendered on foreclosure to the Oakes Ames estate. McVicker, with his

memory to

daughter's happiness in mind, stepped in to the rescue and

bought up his son-in-law's debts, making himself Booth's only creditor and extending him lenient terms. In March, 1875, Booth was discharged from bankruptcy, though it would be a hard pull still to pay McVicker.

They spent the summer at Cos Cob again. There was neither
peace nor quiet to be found under the same roof with Mary, ohe was really ill mentally, and the doctors traced the sly growth of her illness back five years to the birth and death in one day of her lost son, the infant Edgar. The shock of the

PEACE AND QUIET

loss

251

had jarred into actual hysteria what must have been a

tendency. Mary began to suspect slights where none existed. She nursed a sullen obsession that everyone was against her, showed a craving for sympathy that was almost imbecile, and flew into demonic rages at a word. Booth humored her and carefully warned Edwina never to cross her. Outsiders' mouths dropped open at scenes like the one every night at ten when Mary pointed to the dock with a small, jabbing forefinger
stairs.

and snapped: "Edwina!"

Edwina would immediately say good night and whisk upHalf an hour kter "Edwin!" Booth would lay down his book, rise obediently, say an affectionate good night and fade out of the room. "Mrs. Booth," writes Margaret Townsend, who saw this happen, in her Theatrical Sketches, "was one of the most extraordinarily small and precise of women, and it was dif-

for the observer to discover wherein lay her attraction for the great actor, likewise her claim to such absolute control as she practised over her family." Booth's vacation this summer blew up in August with a bad
ficult

carriage accident when one of his horses bolted. Born with a caul and used to a charmed life, Booth was astonished and

rather aggrieved to find he had broken his arm and two ribs. The surgeon called in set his arm crooked, so that kter an-

other surgeon had to break the arm and set k again and he crooked. For the rest of Booth's life it was shorter than the other. He couldn't raise it in a straight line. Something else spoiled was his hurtling fall to the ground at Richard IIFs
set it
it

death. After his accident he had to give it up a pity, because was one of the most stardingly deadlike falls ever seen in

the theater.
II

will never

that "Booth is now 40 years old. He once did." Booth was almost forty-two, and the paper missed again in its prophecy. When he showed himself on the stage of Augustin Daly's Fifth Avenue Theater

A newspaper sniped
draw
as he

252

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
arm in
a black silk
its

in October, 1875, carrying his broken

a packed house shouted

welcome.

He hadn't acted in New

sling,

seen

two years. At Booth's Theater, where he had been George L. Fox was popping up from trapdoors and jumping through policemen's legs in The Adventures of Htanpty-Dumpty in Every Clime. With Booth at Daly's in the cast of Hamlet were two green players, Maurice Barrymore as Laertes and John Drew as

York

for

last,

Rosencrantz. Maurice Barrymore, almost an amateur since first in his family to enter the profession, soon after this married Georgiana, John Drew's sister, and had three chil-

he was the

dren, Lionel, Ethel,

Louisa Lane Drew,

who remembered Junius Brutus Booth and

and John. Young Drew's mother was

was now manageress of the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia. Because of the boy's eminent connections Winter noticed him

"The gentleman who played Rosencrantz evihad an engagement with a friend after the dently performance, so hurried was his speech and so evident his desire to get through with his part." At Daly's Booth played Shakespeare's Richard II for the first time and superbly; the doomed, charming Richard has a deal of Hamlet in him. He good played King Lear. When he had first brashly acted Lear in California he was He was twenty-seven when he admitted the part twenty-three. was too much for him and it out of his But he still studied dropped repertory. it, and when he tried it again after ten years his performance had attained a stature that made some people consider Lear the most wonderful of all his roles, though the gallery always liked his Hamlet better. Booth's Lear was a connoisseur's dish,
in his review:
like Bernhardt's Phfcdre or Jefferson's Bob Acres. Van monotonously yelled to see Jefferson as

The

public

hardt as Camille, and Booth as Hamlet.

Rip

Winkle, Bern-

Booth showed Lear incipiendy mad at the rise of the curtain, dimly and agonizingly aware of his deterioration. His most moving passages were toward the end, the bemused
recognition
daughter,

by

the brain-sick old king of his one faithful

pitiful,

PEACE AND QUIET

For, as I

253

am

To be my

Do not laugh at me; a man, I think this lady child Cordelia,

and the threnody over her dead body,

Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never! " "I remember him," writes Winter, indeed, who that saw him could ever forget? his attenuated figure, his haggard face, his beseechful eyes, his bewildered glance, his timid, hesitant, forlorn manner as he gazed on Cordelia, the doubting, questioning look ... the piteous, feeble movement of the hands, one upon the other, and the pathos of the heart-breaking " voice

Money was

so short that

Booth and Mary exchanged only

days

the simplest gifts this Christmas, though, shutting his eyes to the cost, Booth took Edwina to the French opera. Better

were coming. In January, 1876, he left New York to make a grand tour of the South under John T. Ford's management. Ford had agreed to pay him thirty thousand dollars tor fifty
performances. Mary went along, though thoroughly unfit to travel, refusing to let her husband out of her sight. From

Richmond Booth wrote

darling, just

to Edwina:

"Twas
I first

in this city,

twenty
.

years ago, that

met your angel

mother.
here."
fiercer

Your grandfather Booth was much beloved

was the curiosity centered on Booth as John Wilkes* brother. In Mobile he had a request for free tickets from Ser.

The deeper they penetrated into the reconstructed South the

geant Boston Corbett. "I am sure," Corbett reminded him in his note, "you will not refuse . . when I tell you that I am the United States soldier that shot and killed your brother." Booth winced, and sent the tickets. State legislatures shifted their hours of meeting so members could see him act. Crowds collected at railway stations to gape at the aloof, handsome man with the glossy, black hair over-

254

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

brim of his silk hat and the fur flowing the space between the collar of his coat. In Chattanooga a brass band, stridently hosmet his train. In Nashville women plunged after him pitable, in the street in a mania to touch him, gabbling: "That's him!"
"That's Booth!" News of his approach threw the stock companies he starred with into a perfect dither. Thirty-two supers (the lesser stars his stage armies in Richard HI and got ten) were hired for Macbeth. The actresses, who graded their costumes by the choicest dresses, and magnitude of the visitor, brought out their on opening night the awed, local Laertes, Richmond, or Macduff could hardly hold his weapon for his sweating palm in the
fight at the finale.

was a mountain. She couldn't they had to wait out the nights on sleep a siding. Physically indefatigable, she walked thirteen miles across rough country at Mammoth Cave and next day sidesaddled fourteen more, wearing out the men. But she was ridden with nervous fears, and at Virginia City when they had a chance to go down in a coal mine she hysterically refused and

With Mary every

on a moving

molehill

train, so

forbade her husband to go. "Mr. Taylor!" she ordered one actor, "the resemblance be-

tween you and Edwin is so remarked when you are onstage together as Hamlet and Horatio that I wish you would wear a blond wig." Mr. Taylor did as he was bid.

The Southern tour had ended. They were on their way west. Booth had had an offer from John McCullough, proprietor and manager of the new California Theater in San Francisco. It was twenty years since he had seen the West
in 1856 with five hundred he hadn't much more than that, his fine profits from Ford having been passed on to McVicker. Yet California was still the magic land of new beginnings and

Coast.

He

had

left

San Francisco

dollars.

Twenty

years later

to greet him and Mary was a jaunty old couple who fresh start, Dave Anderson and his bride; she just was the actress Marie Everard, a West Coast favorite in the golden days. Other faces familiar to Booth of yore were there

on hand
had

made a

PEACE AND QUIET

among them Mrs.

255

to be picked out,
cient.

Judah's, fabulously an-

itself was wonderfully transformed. The sea raked it from end to end and the precipitous streets still rushed downhill to the white-capped harbor bristling with masts and pennants, but the city's sparkling, flimsy, fairy-tale look of having been scattered on the hills from the hand of a swooping djinn was gone. San Francisco had grown roots and a history and stone houses and settled citizens, become parents and grandparents, who could trace back their residence for a quarter of a century. The California Theater exuded wealth, especially when filled at night with an opulent-looking audience dressed to the nines. Booth was used to noisy ovations, but the one he got here topped all: the mental picture most of the old-timers had of their little ranchero tearing down Market Street,

San Francisco
still

wind

waving

to his friends, superimposed itself on the shape of the mature actor bowing his acknowledgment of their wild greetings with a faintly tired, regal smile. And to Booth it seemed that if ever he had had a home it was
in California,

where he had been most vagabond. He and Anderson sat back and reminisced voluptuously. Booth felt young and stimulated and hopeful. He went on a stealthy pilgrimage by himself to find the "ranch" where they had lived their glorious bachelor life, but what had been an open space in the sand hills had become a back street swallowed by the metropolis. Their shack was gone, and on its site stood a tenement

A good-looking lad, David Belasco, whose home was in Frisco,

got

The change was ruthlessly complete. Booth's San Francisco engagement ran eight weeks and smashed all records for the dramatic stage in the United States.
house.

as a super and managed to "walk on" with Booth at once in every play he did. Hundreds were turned away each night, and the receipts swelled to over ninety-six thousand dollars, fifty thousand of which went to Booth and from him
least

work

to

McVicker to shave down his debt.

He was back in the East in November and fully middle-aged again. The waters of work closed over his head. "My cor-

256

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

respondence and conversation must needs be vapid/' he wrote distractedly from Boston in May to Ferdinand Ewer, one of
his earliest serious critics

light limit

is

President."

and his friend ever since. "The footGreek book to me. I rarely know who's There was a brighter side: from November to
a sealed

he had earned upward of seventy-two thousand dollars, which changed hands rapidly. And now at last his debt to his father-in-law was paid in full. He could keep the next dollar.

May

Ill

through but she was out by fall, in time to insist on going with her husband on the road. From Chicago Booth scratched Anderson a line about family doings: "June is building a hotel at Manchester sits still smokes and bewails his hard lot. Aggy jobs and looks as though her hair dye had affected her health. Joe 'loafs and invites his soul' at Long Branch and wishes he was a sea-gull." Joe Booth had married and was dabbling in New

One afternoon Dr. Osgood on West Eleventh Street was surprised to have a call from Booth, who looked worn and depressed and begged in a low voice to be allowed to see once more "the room where I secured greatest happiness." This was the book-lined study where Dr. Osgood had tied the knot between the rising young star and Mary Devlin. Booth's second Mary, in a bad state, rested the

my

summer of 1 877

at a sanatorium,

real estate.

He was becoming rather a curmudgeon. His brother

Jersey

hoped that marriage would "moderate and civilize him." Aggy was Junius' new wife, formerly the actress Agnes Perry, who was very good-looking and three years younger than June's
daughter Blanche. June had married her in 1867 and had had four sons by her. Now he was leaving the stage and starting out in the hotel business in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. He ha'd a Booth's grand dreams, and his unfinished hotel was to be a hulking, showy creation with terraced gardens, a dance hall and a staff of fifty. Consequently, the handsome, painted Agnes "jobbed" or acted in short stints to help

raise the

money.

PEACE AND QUIET

Edwin wrote
again to

257

and his houses were crowded. "This is about all I know beyond the limit of my fancy world, where I dream my life away." Some people who had seen him act in his fiery younger years felt he was beginning to refine his art too much, was losing his hold on life. Adam Badeau thought back regretfully to the "awful bursts of passion" that had thrilled him in Booth's early work. Jefferson warned his old friend not to overdo the
his health

Ewer that

was

fair

polishing.

E. Russell,

refine it any further," begged James on the New York Sun. Booth wrote back: "I appreciate all you say, my dear boy, but how in hell can I help being refined? (The above is a
critic

"Don't elaborate, don't

specimen of it) I can't paint with big brushes the fine touches come in spite of me. ... Fm too damned genteel and
exquisite."

Cried Walt Whitman: "Edwin had everything but guts: he had had a little more that was absolutely gross in his composition he would have been altogether first class instead of just a little short of it." Whitman was all for the big voice and the broad-ax gesticulation. He had adored Junius Brutus Booth and gone overboard for the acting of Forrest and Salif

vini,

who, when they let themselves go, Whitman gloried, could "make me forget everything else and follow them!" In comparison with their huge oratory the younger Booth's was a "still, small voice," heard to the last corner of the house yet seeming in the soliloquies to speak from inside the listener. Edwin Booth's mature style had a quiet grandeur. He had
inherited the grandeur; the quietness, which was his own, was his link with the future. E. H. Sothern, twenty years old and a star in the making, now first saw Booth's Hamlet. "His genius," marveled Sothern, "shone like a good deed in a naughty world. was so steady and pure and his acting so free from His
light

exaggeration that he baffled imitation."

In the eighteen months since he had paid off McVicker, Booth had struck a winning streak and was heaping up money.

258

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
the time.

Now was

With determination, with a certain selfrather with the air of someone whose right consciousness, hand knows not what his left hand does, he began to lay discreet plans and pull wires for acting in England again. His ancient near-failure there still smarted. And since Booth had acted there Henry Irving had become star. When H. L. Bateman, the manager of the
England's top

Lyceum

widow and Irving had carried with Bateman's daughter Isabel as on the theater together, had taken over the management leading lady. In 1878 Irving from Mrs. Bateman. Ellen Terry, who slipped into Isabel's considered that "he had to be a little cruel, not for the place, last rime in a career devoted unremittingly and unrelentingly to his art and his ambition." From across the Atlantic Booth had watched Irving's rise a shade wistfully but with a generous admiration uppermost. As what Booth actor-manager of the Lyceum Irving was doing and starring in had failed to do: malting "a go" of producing rumor was afloat that Irving with Miss worth-while plays. Terry planned to tour the United States, and Booth had an one that had first come to him several years earlier inspiration, when his business manager had written to Irving to propose a simultaneous exchange of countries and theaters: Booth to never play at the Lyceum and Irving at Booth's. Irving answered, and Booth had persuaded himself that the letter never reached him. This time Booth wrote in his own hand in March, 1879. "I have now no theater to offer you in exchange for such a courtesy, but whatever service I may be able to render you
in

London,

died, has

among my countrymen I will

He still recommended that Irving when in New York should

cheerfully perform."

at Booth's Theater, which "Sill retains," he emphasized, "nor can it ever entirely lose its Shakespearian prestige." And he mentioned a letter just in from his sister "in which she expresses her great interest in your Hamlet." This was retouching the truth a little, because Asia had thought Irving's Hamlet frightful, called the English actor "a pallid ghost" and urged

pky

PEACE AND QUIET

really was.

259

Edwin to hasten over to show the Londoners what good acting

Asia longed to see her brother. To friends who visited her abroad she poured -out her desperate homesickness. Her married life was a disaster. Shs hated her husband and he had hated her ever since John Wilkes' crime. "It is marvellous how he hates me, the mother of his babies but I am a Booth that is sufficient. I call myself in secret the ladder that he mounted by." She had never come back with Clarke on his business trips second parting from so much she loved would be too home. hard to bear. She remained in England, would die there an exile. "I shall bless God," she told Edwin, "when my hour

comes to relieve me from the thralldom." Often she thought of her youth, of the farm in the vast forestland. Soon after Johnny died, Joe had gone down to sell some of the furniture and rescue the heirlooms, but for many a few old theatrical costumes still hung in a years afterward one of the rooms, among them a dark, ricn suit wardrobe in with gold buttons. As time went on one of the tenants tore them into strips and braided them into rugs. In 1878 old Mrs. Booth had sold the farm. It had passed out
of the family's hands, yet the imprint the Booths left behind could not fade completely. Some fifty years later long after had gone back to dust every child of Junius Brutus Booth's an old lady in the neighborhood still recalled them: their tak-

ing ways; their

"How

wooing voices; their dark, sparkling faces. beautiful was Asia! How handsome John Wilkes

Booth!"

On
acting

Booth April 23, 1879 (Shakespeare's birthday), Richard II at McVicker's Theater in Chicago and was

was

in the middle of the last soliloquy, spoken

at Pomfret.

by Richard

in prison

The

"I

young king says softly: have been studying how I may compare
I live

sad

This prison where

unto the world:

is

And

for because the world

populous,

26o

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
And
I

here

is

not a creature but myself,

it."

cannot do

A calcium light blazed on Booth. Always in this scene he sat

in the same attitude, a slender, rejected, yet still royal figure; the fair brown hair he wore for the part drooping to his shoulders, his head bowed at an angle that varied only in-

performance finitesimally from for no clear reason that he could ever fix on,

one

to the next. But this time,

he changed

his

usual business by impulsively standing up, and in that instant shot cracked. Jerking his head back, he saw the flash a
pistol as a second shot

went off. One self watched his other self make

the three strides down to the footlights to point up into the balcony at the moving shape, which was poising to shoot again. "Arrest that man!" he called. At the police station the would-be assassin allowed that he

was a

clerk in a dry-goods store in St. Louis. fascinating stories: that in shooting at Booth he
his sister's

He spun several
was defending

honor (the reporters pounced on this and did what could with it); second, that he was Booth's illegitimate they son and like his father a tragic genius, only Booth had thwarted
him.

His third statement was even more

titillating:

"My name is
is

Mark Gray.

My reason for attempting to shoot Booth

that

he mocked me. I saw him a few nights since in Richelieu, and Booth said in one of the scenes: 'Mark where she stands!' He had a peculiar emphasis on the word 'Mark.' He said it sneeringly, and I know he meant me. Besides, Booth is not as great an actor as Barrett." Mark Gray, obviously mad as a hatter, was locked up in the

asylum

at Elgin, Illinois. Among dozens of letters inspired by the shooting, Booth had one from Jefferson submitting that it would be "an interesting theme in the future history of the stage that the only man who thought Barrett was better than

Booth turned out to be a lunatic." From England, Ask wrote that her husband was ragingly disgruntled because an attempt had been made on Booth's life

Booth's Theater on Twenty-third Street between Fifth and Sixth

Avenues,

New York Gty.

Interior of Booth's Theater

showing

first scene of Romeo and part of the Juliet with which the Theater From a 3, 1869.

opened February

(Above) The Palace and Play scene for Hamlet, Act III, as produced in Booth's Theater in 1869. The play within the play was performed both behind and in front of the low arch back center. This is one of the first uses of the box set on any New

York stage.
(Below)
1870.

The

last

scene of Richelieu as presented

by Edwin Booth

at his theater in

Both of

these illustrations are

Witham, who was Booth's

scenic ardst.

from watercolor drawings made by Charles (Museum of the City of New York)

W.

PEACE AND QUIET

sorrier for

261

him but would make the public feel When the news reached London, Clarke had burst open Asia's door about two in the morning with a blow "that sent it back against him/' with his hat on his head, and in a loud, excited voice exclaimed over and over: "Bear in mind one thing! Edwin is safe and hearty. He has been shot at on the stage and is not hurt."
that not only didn't scratch him than ever.

upon that," Ask told her brother, "not touched, was a great pity to have escaped." Then Clarke not had launched a tirade on the Booths, "who get all the notoriety without suffering!! Look at me! / was dragged to jail by the neck, literally dragged to prison, and Edwin goes scot-free gets all the fame, sympathy. Who thinks of what / endured?"

"He

dwells

'hurt as if it

shooting had ripped open the barely healed wounds of the family. Booth's mother couldn't rid herself of the picture of this son too lying dead. Mary dreamed of revolvers
all

The

and woke up shrieking. When the first shot went off she had been standing on sentry duty in the wing, keeping her evervigilant eye on her husband, and Booth had had to excuse himself to the audience and hurry back to soothe her before finishing the play. Next morning he had a delayed fit of nerves himself as he realized how all that had saved him had been his unpremeditated rising from his chair. "My caul saved me! Second sight premonition warning! I don't account for what I did, but there's no other explanation."

He

could never talk about

it

without getting a

little

wild-

joked excitedly after the Ghost had gone, Booth went into fits of nervous laughter over the shooting, which he called "the Fool's Revenge." He had one of the bullets pried out of the scenery, mounted on a gold
eyed. Yet like Hamlet,
cartridge cap inscribed

who

and wore

From Mark Gray to Edwin Booth, watch chain. Gray bragged that he had been scheming to kill Booth for
it

on

his

three years. From jail he sent a letter of the twisted, illiterate that all the Booths were used to receiving, warning Edtype win that he must pay nine hundred dollars or "be hurt til he

dy," later another letter from the asylum admitting he had made

262

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

a mistake, "got the wrong pig by the ear. Well, as the learned 'heads' say we all are not infallible, hence its human to err. And to forgive is devine. ... I wish you a happy New Year and manny of them." Fate had her hand in, and now ordained another threat. peculiar, raised black spot, large as a silver dollar and furry to the touch, appeared on Booth's tongue, which began to feel swollen too big for his mouth, was always burning-dry, and had to be kept constantly moistened. Booth, who feared the spot was cancerous, sought out one doctor after another, tragically opening each interview with: "Doctor! I'm the man with a black tongue! " At home he paced the floor and every five minutes sprang at the mirror, put out his tongue as far as it would go and glared in panic. At last Dr. Ghislani Durant, a New York cancer specialist, diagnosed the trouble as a rare type of fungus. The doctor scraped off the parasite and treated the tongue with phenic acid. The condition cleared up. Marvelously re-

Booth went off with Mary to Saratoga to recuperate. passed, then Dr. Durant had a despairing telegram: "BLACK, BLACK, BLACK, BOOTH!" Microscopic specks of the fungus had been left on the tongue and had multiplied until the spot was as alarming as ever. Dr. Durant took the train to Saratoga and began all over. he delicately and painstakingly Every day scraped the diseased and treated it with acid. At the end of six months Booth tongue was really healed. He had paid Dr. Durant's fee, but, as the token of a gratitude beyond fees or words or any recompense, he also sent the doctor an exquisite silver loving cup from Tiffany's around the rim of which was engraved from Maclieved,

few weeks

beth:

The mere

despair of surgery he cures.

IV
was December and Henry Irving had not yet deigned to answer Booth's letter written in March. This made twice he
It

PEACE AND QUIET

263

had ignored a letter. "He has 'the big head' a heap/' was Booth's
opinon. If Irving was slippery, Booth was stubborn. He decided to go to England anyway. "People accept Irving faute de mienx? insisted his friend E. C. Stedman, who was visiting in London, and Asia didn't leave off emphasizing that her brother was

bound
bad.

to succeed there

if

only because Irving's acting was so

Through a London agent Booth reached an understanding with Walter Gooch, manager of the Princess Theater. Booth remembered the Princess as a very fashionable house, and so it had been twenty years before when he first played in London. But since then it had degenerated steadily, and though located in the West End, it catered now to an East End public that the cheap seats to see shockers like Drink and Guinea jammed Gold. Gooch, however, had tremendous plans for the house. He meant to do it over all new, all beautiful and swore to
Booth that by the next autumn a transformed Princess would fling her doors wide and her future policy would be to show

"good plays." Bootn was delighted at the chance to open what would be like a new theater. It seemed a happy omen. "Irving has the A. i. position," he explained in a letter to Dave Anderson. "But maybe I may get an English pat on the back (or a kick,

mayhap) while there." He was acting in New York and on the road. Although almost every city he stopped at held some piece of family history, he had no home love left for any place now. Once he had felt such a love for California, but no longer. Only when he passed through the stage door and saw the lighted stage waiting to receive him behind the lowered curtain did he reel he was at home. In Boston (where June's gay daughter Marion acted Katherine to her uncle Edwin's Petruchio) a letter reached Booth out of the blue from Lawrence Barrett. It was a plea to forget their seven-year-long feud that Barrett's furious words had started. They called on each other, Booth remarking after-

264

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

ward

to Anderson that Barrett, obviously on the make, had "blarneyed" him to his heart's content "all of which I meekly

swallowed for the nonce. Mum.*" Later this spring he played at his own theater, or the theater that had once been his played there most unwillingly, for he found the place "peopled with countless ghosts." In the com-

pany was a jolly, eager boy named Otis Skinner, who did Laertes. Every night, during the tedious wait between Laertes' good-by to Ophelia and his next appearance three acts later when he bounds on to avenge Polonius' death, young Skinner would stamp up and down his dressing room flaying his emotions, and when his cue finally came would hurl himself into the scene. After several nights of this Booth sent for him during an intermission. Booth was smoking as usual and playing solitake.

"Young man," he said thoughtfully, "I've been watching you and you're killing yourself. You've got some high-tone notion you're supposed to be Laertes. Relax! Read a book,
write letters, pky pinochle. Loaf about in the wings. Don't try to work yourself up, it can't be done. Just wait for your cue, then, when you hear it, go on the stage and actf*

Booth and Mary were in a furnished apartment at the Hotel Brunswick overlooking Madison Square and each sunny day Booth spent minutes at the window "the view is lovely with the budding trees and young grass springing." He had a gloomy letter, suggesting solitary heart-eating behind drawn shades, from the still struggling artist Jervis McEntee, to whom he had lent money and whom he now did his utmost to cheer. "Come out of the shadows! " Booth summoned him in words that were almost an echo of the unknown stranger's words, which had done so much for Booth so many
years ago.

"Come

out of your memories and combat your despond-

ency," that nameless friend had written then. And now: "Don't stay in your den and rust in corroding recollections," Booth warned the brooding artist, "it's damned

PEACE AND QUIET

selfishness to

265

do so. ... I did the same once and realize the the ingratitude of my conduct. owe something stupidity to God and to those we mourn for. They expect us to make them some better return for their dear love than mere moans/'

We

He
were

had

his

own

troubles.

The summer

before,

when they

Mary's nervous illness had been violently stimulated by what Booth considered was the deliberate malice of one of her intimate friends, "a devilish work," and Mrs. was a "fiend," an "envious, malicious devil." The result of this woman's repeated suggestions to one
at Saratoga,

to begin to turn Mary her husband. Mary's mother, who had never liked against Booth, helped the mischief on. Booth confided to Laurence Hutton, who had been living near them in Saratoga when the fuss started, that "the damage that Mary and her vile-tongued mother and Mrs. have done me socially, I mean is more than you suppose. I've been busy the past few months listening to and refuting horrible stories about myself." It was not yet a year since he had written to Ask that after ten years of marriage he found not a fault in his wife one of the loveliest things he had ever written to her, his sister answered as she forlornly contrasted his marriage with her own. It would, she feared, take Clarke a long time to enumerate "all

whose mind was already disturbed was

my

deficiencies."

Then came Saratoga, and Mary's condition took a jump for the worse. At the theater this spring her behavior was the

On her bad days she would let no one, including his dresser, speak to or come near her husband. "She would attend to all the robing and make-up," Otis Skinner
talk of the greenroom.
like Richelieu and King Richard would the trailing robes and, walking close behind, follow gather up him to his entrance, never releasing him until his cue was spoken from the stage." Sometimes the actors gave impromptu parties onstage after the play, but Booth was not allowed to attend them. Mary expected him, however, to be at her side when she served tea in the anteroom to her special friends. She would beckon the

writes,

"and in parts

266
nearest

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
member of the
cast.

Mr. Booth? They alknew, though they never admitted, that Mr. Booth would ways be down in the cellar drinking beer with the grips. These were his only escapades. At home he held the wailing
is

"Where

"

Not only was her mind worse, the doctors looked serious over a hacking cough she had. For hours in the tense afternoons before the performance or late at night when his work was over, Booth rocked her on his lap like a child, laid his cheek against hers, stroked her hair, coaxed her back to reason. The room was not large enough to hold her restlessness. The years flew back and it was his father whose mad feet pounded through a hotel bedroom; he could smell the dust, hear the plink-a-plink of a boy's banjo. As Mary grew wilder, he grew more tender. She could not help herself, not even when, her mania coming on her, she screamed that she hated him, was persecuted, martyred. "The peculiar phase of hysteria has increased and has manifested itself in worse form than ever," he told Hutton.
girl in his arms.

Early in June the once well-known actor John Brougham He had been a favorite in his day, yet at his funeral there was a poor turnout. The arrangements made by his friends were cheap and skimpy, even the black crepe ran short. Booth, who
died.

was a pallbearer, found it a "shamefully sad affair," in spite of which, perhaps because of which, he risked a small joke at the sparsely attended graveside. Brougham had been a very large man. His coffin had been partly lowered when it had to be hauled up into view again so the grave could be widened.
"It
is

the last recall!" Booth

murmured

to

Winter standing

beside him.

were

premium. away. Hothouse flowers were massed overpoweringly around a bust of the guest of honor. Among the favored ones invited
Barrett; Jefferson; Dr. Durant, asked at Booth's request;

So much for an actor forgotten. few days after Brougham's funeral a champagne breakfast was given for Booth at fashionable Delmonico's as a send-off before he sailed for England. Invitations were at a An orchestra strummed

PEACE AND QUIET

267

and Winter ('"Weeping Willy," Booth called him), who was slopping over with tearful farewell sentiments. Barrett had hinted ahead of time that his seat at table must " be above the salt. 'Tis my part to be quiescent in this business," Booth parried. The fun started at noon and lasted until night, leaving its mark even on the reserved guest of honor who, though he had
dreaded the occasion beforehand, exulted to Barrett afterward: "Wasn't it jolly as well as grand? Everyone was limber, in fact I found myself 'quite so' and have small knowledge of how or when I reached home. First time I've been so for ages
sick yet!"

Richelieu, which could be counted on to please, rather than with Hamlet, which would seem like wanton defiance of Irving, whose Hamlet had become the towering performance of the London stage and had run for two hundred nights, twice as

Weeping Willy Winter had his shrewd side. His eyes were when he advised Booth to open in London with quite dry

long as Booth's.

June 30, 1880, Booth walked up the gangplank of the Gallia with his blooming daughter on his arm. Edwina ship was eighteen, the age her father had been when he first saw California. On Booth's other arm hung his tiny, pining, fading
wife.

On

After changing her mind a dozen times, Mary had decided to

course of the trip over talked her husband into opening in

Hamlet.

CHAPTER

12

Pat on the Back

fair a

So foid and

day 1 have not seen. Macbeth, Act 7, scene 3

WITH
still

HIGH hopes they landed

at

Queenstown.

They stopped in London just long enough for Booth to shake hands with Walter Gooch, who was
scurrying in and out of his theater with inhe renovated. Then they crossed over for a pleasure tour of the continent, lasting several weeks. In Paris Booth took Edwina to the Porte Saint Martin to see the same play he and her young mother had seen there in 1862 and to his astonishment the same actress as heroine. That pantheress of a star Madame Sarah Bernhardt was out of the city, soon to leave for America to make her New York debut at, of all places, Booth's Theater, but they saw Coquelin ain6 at the Comedie Frangaise. Luster, intellect, finesse Coquelin's art had them, and yet to Booth the French style was too acasectlike industry as

demic;

it

wanted

soul.

With high hopes they crossed back to London. If California in Booth's memory had a golden haze around it, London was an etching, a black and white with outlines smudged by fog. After twenty years the picture was still true. The autumn
268

PAT ON THE BACK

269

weather was chill and dull as he settled his little family into an awesomely expensive suite at the smart St. James Hotel in Piccadilly, then went off to begin rehearsals at the Princess.
theater as

time his heart misgave him. The it over was handsome in a stiff but Booth, struck with sudden foreboding, began (too way, late) to wonder if the long association of this house with trashy
for the
first

And now

Gooch had done

thrillers

could be lived

ordinary. actors in it,

in a train

As

down overnight. The scenery was for the company, there were only two acceptable and it was a discouraging omen that one was killed

wreck before the opening, while the other was finally from appearing by a complication about his contract. kept And everywhere Booth went it seemed the chief thing talked of was Henry Irving's latest equipment and crack casts at the

Lyceum. Booth opened ("I went in head first!") in Hamlet on November 6. London's American colony was present to a man, all Americans having for weeks boastfully harped on the string of how superior Booth was to Irving* The English playgoers waited to be shown. A few had seen Booth act in his own Lord country and had been pleased in their composed fashion. for example, on his return to England was asked Houghton, his opinion of Booth and gave it, that "Booth was a really fine
actor
quite so/'

But the suspicion, gathering and darkening as the dread night drew near, that with his usual instinct for business he had for
the second time steered his London engagement into the worst theater was fatally depressing to Booth. So were the possible well-meant warnings of friends that he was not to mind if the

London critics were

reserved. When he walked on at last into Gooch's shoddy settings he was fatally resigned, fatally calm, stern and cold, and his mood touched his performance with a
fatal kiss. Said the Standard,

reviewing the opening:

. . .

"A

dis-

appointment." The Observer: "Artificial

uninspired."

The
sical."

Daily

News: "An

actor's

Hamlet

cold and clas-

270

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

that Mr. Booth gave "a thoroughly and consistent reading of a favorite part/' that only intelligible occasionally was he "laboured and tricky." It was a mixed reception, by no means all bad; the dishearthadn't caught ening element was its faintness. Booth's genius the public. On his second night, still more on his third, his initial coldness wore off as his work gripped him, but by then it was too late. His first impression on the critics had been made beyond unmaking. It was possible, too, that he had waited a few years too long to come back to London, the

The Times conceded

was the pace-setter of things theatrical in the EnglishReview regretted some of his speaking world. The Saturday old-fashioned tricks" like "taking the stage": to "odd and command all eyes, Booth would strike a pose up center, the
city that

and buried," days scoffed the Telegraph's critic, Clement Scott, and he made fun of the American Hamlet's "poor and unattractive dress, his tangled black hair hanging in feminine disorder down the
back this was Edwin Booth, who looked as if he had stepped out of some old theatrical print in the days of elocution." Scott had felt something, though, of a spell impossible to analyze "impossible," he admitted, "to keep the attention off
that remarkable face, that strange eyes that rolled and changed."

obvious tableau. attention-riveting figure of an of the old classical school are dead "The

power

ot expression, those

Booth on his side had coldness to complain of and wrote to Hutton three days after the opening: "They tell me my success is great!!/ and all that. But the rress damns me with faint
praise

the audiences are cold and dead, truly British." had had from them none of the warm response to individual points that Americans always lavished on him, especially in Hamlet, a play that was his touchstone of the quality of audiences. Famous lines such as

He

The

play's the thing,

whose kunching in America called forth storms of enthusiasm, in London fell almost flat and brought down the confidence

PAT ON THE BACK

2J1

of the actor with them. At home the American papers were the word of Booth's spreading disappointing reception and vowing vengeance if Irving came to their shores. Americans in London growled of "insular spleen/' They annoyed and embarrassed Booth. "I think the gush of my countrymen here has injured me somewhat. There's no restraining the eagle when he feels like screeching and he 'scroched' too much for

me." This last was to Barrett, written some weeks later, by which time Booth was putting the best face he could on things. He
assured Bispham that the purity of my English is invariably praised," and to Stedman he insisted bravely that "the feeling for me is warming every day." So it was, a little, his houses having dwindled to a handful of true admirers whose enthu'

siasm every night gave him the heart to hang on. But the box-office sheet, cool criterion that takes no account of a sensitive artist's need to encourage himself, showed mortifyingly
small profits.

Booth took off Hamlet and tried Richelieu, which Winter had advised him to open with, and as by a charm, the receipts climbed, though only temporarily. But the daily press was not to be won. The Times was at pains to point out that Booth and Bulwer Lytton, the author of Richelieu, were the same sort of artist: both were thinly endowed, though well trained and resourceful. "I hardly think," Booth ventured, "the critics have shown me a kindly spirit, but they are very provincial and 'litde' in their views of art matters. ... In New York or elsewhere in America Mr. Irving, Monsieur Fechter might appear while I was in full swing & yet receive kindly and impartial treatment yet here, in this great world of London a poor stranger is
cold-shouldered as a trespasser." Almost overnight he was in the position of suing for favor, who in his own land was the star of stars. "If I get no other
benefit here," he wrote, "I shall learn to appreciate the good will that has always stood by me in the American theaters."

272

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Yet almost every night a man or woman from one of his took the trouble to seek Booth out backstage scanty audiences he knew of their deeply felt admiration. A to make certain of titles came to see him, which nattered him, coming
sprinkle as he did

from democratic America;

besides, titles

were sup-

business. Royalty, however, had held back so posed to help far. "The Queen," Booth complained of the aging, stoutening, widow Victoria, "is too 'stuck up' to patronize still

grieving

me-so's Wales." He was asked out a great deal and accepted invitations for and Mary, was dined Sunday evenings for himself, Edwina, no wine these days. His and wined only he was drinking hosts and fellow guests stared blankly at his empty glass. He was too busy and fearful of ruining everything by his poor
head for drinking to accept the stag 7
invitations.

the 'boys a wrong notion of me gives sedate and very proper behavior will tell."

"Perhaps this but in the end, I think,

my

At one of the great houses the Booths met Robert Browning,

and wearing what very loud-talking and self-congratulatory seemed to be a blue-checked flannel shirt. The actor, demure in his correct swallowtail and his determination to do the
right thing,
"that's all affectation!" And, "Oh, he cried to Anderson of upper-class provincial London, which was so completely one large family. "I often

was

repelled
is!"

how

it

fancy myself in Belair while listening to the really unsophisticated though highly cultured Briton." One of the humblest and dearest of the old friends at home whose comfortable face he longed to see was Anderson, and now he reminded Davy that since his London opening he had had congratulations from hundreds of persons, "but not a line from thee. Now, this is not meant reproachfully, for I know there is not a heart that throbs on earth that doth more rejoice at my success than thine, my Davy, but, nevertheless, would I be happier to have had a line of greeting to that effect."

Many English actors, of a more manly and generous breed than the critics, had cordially wished him well. John

A
Ryder,

PAT ON THE BACK

273

who

played the Capuchin Joseph in Richelieu, "with

tears declares that I have toppled his idol (Macready) to the success as a father and is as anxious of may be as

ground,

my

you

are."

The

Booths ate their Christmas roast beef

at the Clarices'

house, where John Clarke occupied rooms churlishly separate from his wife and children. Booth was on fairly friendly terms with him and took some of Asia's accusations with a grain of

"John's a good fellow, if you can get under his shell." first Christmas he and Asia had spent together since they were children. Booth longed to have their dear old mother with them "What a miserable existence is the actor's,
salt.

This was the

especially if he

is

domestically inclined!"

Asia was rewriting her book about their father and he persuaded her to leave out the euphemism "boyish mesalliance" when speaking of Mr. Booth's first marriage. She planned to add a section about Edwin's youth. He obligingly dredged up what he could to pass on to her of his wanderings with his
father, then of his bachelor adventures. It was more exquisitely well imagine disturbing to live over the happy times. "You may

my

day," feelings at this rides to Tipesville,' midnight t'other side o' the globe."

late

he told Anderson, "taking our and sailing the seas toward

Soon
flower
ter.

after writing this he heard from Anderson. pressed in California tumbled out of the old actor's letgrown

II

Booth opened in The Foots nights after Christmas his most indifferently received bill yet, though during Revenge, its short run his first English royalty in the persons of the Prince and Princess of Wales materialized in the royal box.

Two

The chunky, bearded, beribboned Prince loved the good things

the latest of which he had discovered was blonde Lillie Booth into his presLangtry, the "Jersey Lily." Summoning ence in the manner of one who crooks a finger, he said to the
of
life,

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

pleased and expectant player: "I'm glad to see you, Mr. Booth. I sent for you because I wish to get your opinion about Mrs.

Langtry's chances of success as an actress in America." After the New Year, Booth's contract with Gooch was due to lapse. Gooch pressed hard to renew it. His reputation as a "cheap-John" manager was so well known to all except Booth
until the

that he had had trouble finding any star to reopen his theater American signed with him. But because profits trailed
far behind

what had been expected, he stipulated that a larger cut be made before the star got his fifty per cent.
.
.

Booth gave in. He was no match for "Gougy Goochy who is, perhaps," he wailed to Barrett, "the most contemptible
.

little usual foresight and ingrate I've ever dealt with. With business tact I signed a contract which placed me completely in the little Jew's power. . . . The little pig has tricked me into

my

reducing terms, and

desiring to prolong
his extortion."

an engagement,

which might have been

I

originally made for any length of time

chose

I've

To add to his frustration, Booth had heard the critics actually

joked ahead of time about the way they planned to go for him ("Let 'em go!") when he gave Othello as his next production,

had to yield to

two principal parts alternately. Three inches of wet during the run of this play, giving some excuse for the sagging box office. His engagement, neither success nor complete failure, muddled along dismally until one gray day in January his door opened and, lo! it was Henry Irving come to call Booth having now been in London three months. The contrast between the Irving of 1861 and of 1881 was one of the wonders of the profession. His apprenticeship as an actor (the period that Booth in California had spent in skylarking and not learning his lines and succeeding in spurts through a genius that couldn't be kept under) Irving had spent in diligent self-improvement, toiling, observing, strengthening his weak spots, never missing a chance to advance his career. Booth had remembered Irving vaguely as a rather colorless young man not out of the West with long
acting the

snow

fell

frank,

commonplace

features.

Now the saying went that there

Country

A
yrere three

PAT ON THE BACK

275

men in London whom people turned to stare after: Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, and Irving. Irving had transformed a pair of long, skinny legs into props of distinction, had made a guttural, halting voice into an abused but talked-about hallmark. He wore his blue-black hair in a lumpish thatch over his collar. His profile was pale, pronounced, distinguished, but the candid expression of his youth was a sacrifice to this ruthless metamorphosis: the new Irving looked secretive, almost furtive. Everywhere except on the stage itself, even in his dressing room and as far as the wings, he wore pince-nez on a black cord over darkly glowing, small, somewhat close-set, nearsighted eyes. His manner to strangers
was exceedingly courteous,
gentle man,"
in the least a tender man."
gentle and indirect.

"He

is

a very

said his leading lady Ellen Terry,

"though not

Avoiding any mention of the letters Booth had written to he justice, he had probably forgotten, reminded Booth how he, Irving, owed his final sucsmilingly cess to Booth's hesitation in taking up the option on the Lyceum. "He is apparently a good fellow," Booth speculated to Hutton, "but his first impression on me (owing to embarrassment, doubtless) was not at all pleasant."
him, which, to do him
throat specialist, Dr. Morell Mackenzie, was It was soon after treating Mary Booth's persistent cough. called in Sir William Jenner, Irving's visit that Dr. Mackenzie the Queen's physician, for consultation, and the two doctors broke the news to Booth that his wife's cough was caused by

London

tuberculosis of the throat and lungs in an advanced stage. Besides this, her mind was failing fast. "She doubtless has uterine mania," Booth wrote to Hutton.

She was not

herself; her spiteful

words were not her own.

"My great pity for her," Booth wrote, "has overcome all & my hatred for those who really caused feeling of resentment, her to act as she did is increased tenfold. . . . Seeing my wife
me mad." suffering here before me makes In February he tried King Lear and this time at last he struck

276
it.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
The
Era.

"Nothing finer of the kind has been known upon the English

stage!" applauded E. L. Blanchard in

Charles Reade, playwright and author of The Cloister and the Hearth, came to see Booth. In Sacramento in 1856 one of Booth's acting chores had been to dress up as a priest in Reade's Reade was bowled melodrama Two Loves and a Life. over by Booth's Lear and, as he always did when deeply moved by acting, seemed to take it as real. "Poor old man, they have broken his mind, but see how he holds his dignity/' Reade

Now

whispered to

his friend

Edward House

as

Booth stepped fora friend of Booth's.

ward bowing House was an American and he was also

only slightly for a curtain

call.

and Reade had admired the performance. "I'm sorry that Friday was the night Mr. Reade saw me," Booth answered, "for I was
unusually disturbed then." That night in his dressing

He sent a line to the actor to tell him how much both he

room halfway through

the play

Mary, who ought to have been at home in bed, had flown into
hysterical convulsions, with contortions of the face, tossings and lashings of the head and limbs. Dr. Mackenzie was sent

for and warned Booth it was touch and go whether she could an hour. Booth forced himself away from her side to finish the performance and take his calls with the dignity that Reade admired. Afterward he rushed her home through side streets where the horses could go at a gallop. Both her doctors absolutely refused to treat her any longer unless she were kept away from the theater. They gave her only a few weeks, in any case. "The poor little girl whose ill-balanced brain has caused me so many years of discomfort is passing away from us," Booth wrote to Hutton on March 12 at two in the morning. "They tell me she is dying & that I may expect her death at any time. All that is gone before, so far as she is concerned, is nothing now. . It is very pitiful to see her (half crazy all the while) fading before our eyes, while Edwina (deprived of sleep & half dead with sorrow for the only mother she has known) & I worn with my nightly labors & watchful all the while, sit turn by
live
. .

A
turn to cheer her.

PAT ON THE BACK

. .
.

277

can imagine the condition of my madman every night & nursing a half insane, dying wife all day, and night too for that

You

poor wits

just

now. Acting

matter, I

am

scarce sane

my

Tennyson came to see King Lear. Tennyson never went to the theater unless a free box were given him, so Booth provided one. Next day, a Sunday, Booth dined with the Booth
poet.

had brought along poor Mary's autograph album. "I hope you don't expect me to compose anything for it," gloomed Tennyson. "Oh, certainly not," said Booth. "I never give my autograph," Tennyson rumbled on. "I had a request for it today all the way from India, and I refused." At last he condescended to poise his pen over the little book and actually inquired what quotation Booth would like. Booth murmured that a couple of lines from The Bridge or The Brook would do nicely, that his wife was very fond of both, before he remembered miserably that The Bridge was by Longfellow.

Although his King Lear was a critical success, he had made hardly more than hotel-money out of it. His houses were papered, and word that the great Booth was playing to deadheads must be all over the theater world. He could tell by the way Gooch's company looked at him. His pocket-book was almost bleeding. What with the enormous expenses of Mary's illness he would soon have to draw on his capital at home. But the loss of prestige, the undeserved loss, depressed him most. If just once before he left England he could show himself with a first-class company! He swallowed his pride and asked Irving if he might give some matinees at the Lyceum. He had seen something more of Irving now and was beginning to find him "a very pleasant fellow and kindly inclined." Irving most agreeably and unexpectedly proposed that instead he and Booth should costar in one of the Lyceum's superproductions of Othello, taking turns in the main roles. It was the change of luck, the stroke of luck, Booth had been waiting for.

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

But when the papers announced that he and Irving would soon act together, Booth's business at the Princess was knocked
People were waiting to see the two stars at once. Booth's under the dingy banner of Gooch, which was a double bill of The Merchant and Katherine and Petruchio, was played to houses that could be counted. Charles Reade continued faithful, and was often seen in a box at the Princess sitting alone ("to shut out England," he said) as he concentrated on the all-sufficient world down onstage where Booth, nearly sick with anxiety over his wife, fought rides of nausea, drove himself and drew on his reserves. His powerful acting won emotional praise from Reade, who snorted: "The London press is an ass!"
flat.

last effort

Edward House, furious at the indifference shown Booth, by printing in one of the London papers a statement of the average annual income (over $100,000) earned by Booth in the United States. House then compared this with the much smaller incomes earned by the best British stars in England in the same period. "Not the most delicate method
retaliated

for celebrating our countryman," he acknowledged, "but

it

was soothing." Some of Booth's friends were puzzled why a man whose wife was dying should distress himself so over poor houses. They were not actors. On March 26 Booth closed his season at the Princess. "At last my great London engagement is ended," he exploded to Stedman. "Thank God a thousand times, again
and again repeated. I never had such an uphill drag of it." Rehearsals with Irving hadn't yet started so he used the interval to hunt for cheaper rooms. He could no longer afford the elegant St. James. He found a rather dreary house with smoking chimneys on Weymouth Street for less than half what the hotel had cost and moved into it with Mary and Edwina,. who was to do the housekeeping. After making the invalid, lost to reality, comfortable with her nurses, he went to pay a call on his public kind Mr. Reade in Knightsbridge. He listened absorbedly while the old writer reminisced of the acting of Junius Brutus Booth in

A PAT ON

THE BACK

279

1836 during Mr. Booth's last trip to England. "He was not so * grave as you, young sir. He was full of life, full of fire. . Blank verse came from his lips like music. You have the art too his example, no doubt. I think too I caught an echo of your father's voice in Shylock. I have a good memory for voices. You have the same accent the very same. With my the eyes shut, I think you might lead me back to my place in
.

pit fifty years ago."

Reade,

who had

never been to America, was a hot Yanko-

"Is it credible, I ask you, that the leading actor of Engphile: land should visit America, and be received there as you are

here?"

Booth carefully reminded the angry old man of Henry

Irving's hospitable offer.

"Irving

may

all

may have many motives," Reade retorted, "and they be good ones."
Ill

Back in the dreary autumn when Booth first opened at the Princess one of the many published cartoons of him and Irving had shown the potential rivals, with hands in pockets, sourly
looking each other up and down.

The legend underneath ran:

that,

Cox (An English Hamlet) Who are You? Box (An American Hamlet) If it comes to You?

Who

are

Now that Irving had noticed Booth by calling on him, dement Scott of the Telegraph hastened to put on a large party in Queen Square in honor of the two stars, who were much and half-maliciously eyed as they stood chatting together in almost the same attitudes as in the cartoon, though with looks

and giving frequent nods of agreement. politely attentive Booth took the time to see Irving in The Bells, his most famous whose guilty convehicle, in which he played a murderer science hounds him to his death. Irving's extraordinarily in strong for agile pantomime, like graphic performance went a story-telling dance, and cunningly descriptive use of proper-

280
ties

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

had rather "a lot," Booth suggested in a letter to Winter, waiting in America with his mouth ajar for news, "of red silk
pocket handkerchief in
it."

Booth met Ellen Terry for the first time at a special benefit at Drury Lane in which Irving happened to be taking part. Booth was behind the scenes sitting quietly in Irving's dressing room, his back to the door. "Here's Miss Terry," exclaimed to see a tall, Irving, and the visitor glanced around quickly lean young woman with reddish hair, nose, piquant, tiptilted cleft chin, and radiantly playful expression. Ellen Terry, it developed, never did think much of Booth as an actor and was even a little contemptuous of him as lacking the drive and tough, fighting spirit by which Irving, with none of Booth's natural advantages, had thrust his way to the front. But she never forgot that first impression of Booth. What she saw was a rather small, swarthy-pale man whose features had begun to thicken and whose black hair was salted with gray. Then he looked up at her. She almost caught her

any face, in any country, seen such wonderful eyes," she recalls. "There was a mystery about his appearance and manner a sort of pride, which seemed to " say: TDon't try to know me, for I am not what I have been.' Rehearsals for Othello, twinkling with two stars, began at the Lyceum. letter was delivered to Booth in his dressing room from Irving's estranged wife, and the mother of his two

breath. "I have never in

sons. Irving hadn't spoken to her for ten years. There was a story that Florence Irving sometimes read a newspaper as she sat in a box during her husband's she performances. wrote to the guest at the Lyceum instead of to her husband.

Now

"Dear Mr. Booth, can you spare me a box? I should like to have my sons see what good acting is." Miss Terry was to be Desdemona. Irving was doing lago first. Booth was immensely and favorably struck by this actormanager's genius for directing. Irving was a master at handling crowds, and made each actor on the Lyceum stage excitingly aware of his relation to the others, of his contribution to the
whole
effect.

While

rehearsals

were going on, the "Gov'nor"

PAT ON THE BACK

281

lounged out in front, so low in his chair that only his broadbrimmed hat and shock of hair could be seen from* behind, and
issued his instructions in a monotone, requiring everyone up there from Ellen Terry to the boy who played the Messenger to repeat a line or piece of business over and over until it was
right.
"It's

half

no better/' sighed Miss Terry once an hour over a short dialogue.

it's

after

they had spent

"Yes,
Irving

little

When

they rehearsed a scene

better," said Irving, "so it's worth doing." in which the guest

appeared

would considerately inquire how he wanted the action. Booth would smile deprecatingly and wave his hand and murmur: "I leave

Only

and his lackadaisicalness really shocked both usually do it and the conscientious company. Brought up in a school Irving that was resignedly tolerant of poor support, Booth had never entirely freed himself from the independent habit of the oldtime star who thought of his performance as an affair of the emotions between himself and his audience. "At rehearsal," recalls Ellen Terry, "he was very gentle

to you, Mr. Irving." occasionally he offered a suggestion: "This "

it

is

how

and apathetic."
After the
first

one she had

said sweetly:

"Do you know,

came
to

Mr. Booth, that don?"

I just

hated you

when you

first

Lon-

Booth's response was polite rather than interested. "Why so?" "Because," cried Miss Terry naively, throwing out both arms in direction, "I thought you had come to deIrving's

throne

The same thrust was driven home harder in another cartoon. This one was labeled "The Lyceum Lion," and showed a lion with a human face and several little human-faced dogs snapwere Irving's, comping futilely at its feet. The lion's features with eyeglasses on a black ribbon, and one of the dogs
plete

my god."

was Booth.

To

gleeful Ellen

Terry

in her early prime the middle-aged

282

PRINCE OFPLAYERS

Booth seemed "broken and devoid of ambition." "He had not the spirit," she concluded, "which can combat such treatment as he received at the Princess, where the pieces in which he appeared were 'thrown' on to the stage with every mark of assumption that he was not going to be a success." Booth what a happy reporter in an interview proposed to it would be if Booth could take over the Lyceum arrangement while Irving toured America. This had been Booth's dream for years; now he shook his head. "I went through all that at

Booth's Theater."
Especially after seeing Irving in action he realized the im"There was a time when I had the energy and experienced all the evident delight in these things which Mr.

possibility.

I am an actor, not a manager," motives in inviting Booth to act with him Irving's deepest at the Lyceum were variously interpreted by friends of both sides. Whatever they were, Irving was the one who risked and his timely invitation was a lifesaver to Booth. Yet most, Ellen Terry intuitively laid her finger on it as being a main cause of their guest's sad listlessness. Grateful though he was, "I cannot be sure," she writes, "Booth's pride was not more hurt by this magnificent hospitality than it ever could have been by disaster. . . . I coula imagine Henry Irving in America in the same situation accepting the hospitality of Booth. Would not he too have been melancholy, quiet, unassertive, almost as uninteresting and uninterested as Booth was?" To be "interesting" counted a great deal with Miss Terry. "Irving's hold upon me is that he is INTERESTING no matter how he behaves. I thank he must be put down among the 'Greats/

Irving

feels. I

do so no longer.

Constantine, Nero, Caesar, Charlemagne, Peter,

all,

Napo-

INTERESTING." Mary Booth, whose hoarse, lunatic yells could be heard up and down Weymouth Street, was not expected to live the week out. Her rapid decline was followed in the newspapers. "Mrs. Booth," said a bulletin, quoting one of her doctors, "is like a soldier in battle. She may be shot at any moment." 'Trast night we thought would be her last," Booth wrote to
leon, all 'Great,' all selfish,
all

but

PAT ON THE BACK

283

Bispham on April 7. Yet she hung on, and on April 20 he notified Hutton with the composure of one who has been through everything that, though she still lay "helpless very weak and
emaciated utterly demented," she might linger for weeks. His nightmare he couldn't help himself was that she would die at the beginning or halfway through his engagement with Irving, which promised to be momentous, and cut it short. Every good seat was already sold, even though prices had been hiked up to the opera scale: a guinea in the stalls, half a guinea for the dress circle. All over London the posters advertised BOOTH AS OTHELLO! IRVING AS IAGO! There had been nothing to equal it since 1817 when Kean and Junius Brutus Booth faced each other like gamecocks on the stage of Drury Lane.

IV
Irving's kingdom, was a quite conceived house from Booth's Theater, being differently of gorgeous and vast. When he pretty and intimate instead took it over, Irving had had it repainted in sage green and it hung with blue silk draperies turquoise blue. He had had

The Lyceum, which was

and given

it

midnight-blue shields shaped like scallop shells for the footlights. On the night of May 2, 1881, several hundred people who driven by the raised prices usually sat in the stalls had been and demand for tickets into the upper circles. Edwina with

a sky-blue and gold ceiling, stalls upholstered in velvet, lace curtains in the boxes, and dainty

her Aunt Asia and one of Asia's daughters occupied a box. The American Minister and the Consul General were there. The audience, though not unusually fashionable, was a very alive one, full of intellectuals and artists, including the twentyand it warmly greeted Irving when five-year-old Oscar Wilde, with Roderigo. Irving was brilliantly as lago he walked on said the Boothites) in a arrayed (he overdressed the part, a green doak, and a hat like a gondocrimson and gold jerkin, from crown to kneecap with jipcrliVior lier's, and he was

hung

silver

charms with which

his slender, active fingers toye

284

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

The really deafening ovation was saved for the next scene when lago and Othello, with the characteristic gaits, jerking
and gliding, of their respective interpreters entered together Booth looking eastern and graceful in a flowing, goldembroidered gown looped up on the left hip by a jeweled in gold and purple, fastening, and a Moorish burnoose striped
pearl hoops in his ears. The picked, sensitive audience, appreciative of everything about Booth, from his gloomy home life

to his ordeal at the Princess, was making up for past neglect. When the applause subsided Irving's jangling yet compelling voice began:

"Nine or ten times had thought to have yerk'd him here under the

ribs."

As Irving said it, it was "thut to have yairked him," given with a wrenching back of the lips. Booth's answer dropped each word with each syllable rounded:
"Tis
calls for the

better as

it is."

Backstage the Lyceum actors avidly kept score: so many Gov'nor; so many for Booth; so many for the two together. Out in front the eagle and the lion couldn't agree about which star got the more frenzied welcome. To the
it seemed that Booth's reception "carried everything before it, like the rush of a river." But the counter-impression of Percy Fitzgerald, a Britisher, was that "audiences have unfortunately but little delicacy. In their plain way they show their appreciation of whom they 7 think 'the better man . . . and I remember how this audience

American Edward House

actor should be shared

by

his host."

Here
the

at last

were Booth and Irving on the same

as

stage. Irpile

ving's tendency
details.

an actor (as a director, too) was to

on

His bustling realism left nothing to the audience, "would have been most eloquent to an audience of the deaf and

dumb,"

as

somebody aptly hit

it off.

In his popular production

PAT ON THE BACK

285

of Hamlet, for example, Irving's own first appearance was always much worked up, with music, a parade of the courtiers, then an imperceptible but effective dimming of the lights and the entrance or the Prince all alone. By contrast, Booth's Prince in recent years was discovered at the rise of the curtain seated quietly with the rest of the court, and to those susceptible to this method his somber repose was as impressive as Irving's elaborately stage-managed display. But now in Othello on the Lyceum's busy stage Booth's acting, as the lone example of a more formal style, seemed

and alien. His poses were out of a museum; the music of voice was like some stately dance tune played by lutes and his viols. "I shall never make you black," he had promised Ellen Terry early in the rehearsals. 'When I take your hand I shall
static

have a corner of

my

drapery 'in

my

hand. That will protect

meant it would keep his sooty Othello make-up from rubbing off on her, impossible to prevent when Irving, a fierce layer-on-of-hands in his realism, played Othello. "I'm bound
to say," she admitted, "that I thought of Mr. Booth's protection with some yearning the next week when I played Desdemona
to Henry's Othello. Before he had done with as black as he."

He

me I was

nearly

She granted too that Booth's elevated performance helped her Desdemona (a fey and charming heroine personality was Miss Terry's strong point) because "it is difficult to preserve the simple, heroic blindness of Desdemona to the fact that Othello mistrusts her if Othello is raving and stamping. Booth was gentle in the scenes with Desdemona until the scene where Othello overwhelms her with the foul word."

At week's end

the stars exchanged roles.

The

general opin-

ion of press and public after sampling the exchange was that both lagos belonged in the very first rank, both Othellos in the second. Neither Booth nor Irving really had the temperament or physique for Othello. They were not simple or primitive enough; Booth was too short and Irving too lanky. Irving

286

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

lacked even more than Booth the massive, rough-hewn qualities the part needed, and even his admirers admitted the most serious defect in his acting was his want of genuine tragic force. He was too light an actor for high tragedy. He could be pathetic, since pathos can be simulated, but his displays of true. passion never rang quite "In his whole composition/' read a dispatch sent from London to the New York Heraidy "there is not a gleam of that fire which illuminates the best of Edwin Booth's impersonations.
the other hand/' pursued this correspondent with "take from Booth his one most precious penetrating fairness, him with his own nature and instincts, all the and allow
gtft

... On

that distinguish Irving, and he would never have more than the most ordinary place in his profession." secured But both Irving and Booth could do villains, especially the
qualifications

and so personally captivating that a girl who saw it asked how Desdemona could have been left done with him without a chaperone, had been recognized in America for years as one of his masterpieces. Ellen Terry, however, was cool to its attraction. She thought the diabolism archaic and obvious and the whole performance "deadly commonplace after Henry's," which was overhung with ingenious new readings and clever bits of business, just as Irving's person was with jingling ornaments.

complicated ones. Booth's lago, very diabolic, very Venetian,

A critic for Macmillaris Magazine agreed with her only inis truly said of Mr. Irving that he is never commonplace, but this freedom from commonplace may sometimes be purchased at the expense of common sense. ... Irving is never content to do as others have done, to find the same meaning in words that others have found, to read human nature as others have read it." As lago, Irving picked his teeth with his dagger all through one speech, then wiped the blade on his sleeve (the front of the house loved this), and as he stood listening while Cassio talked with Desdemona in the scene at Cyprus, he casually plucked and ate a bunch of grapes, then spewed out the seeds

sofar that "it

PAT ON THE BACK

287

one by one. "Though the action

is easy and natural enough," Morris in Macmillarfs, comparing the two agreed Mowbray much less really natural to the character than lagos, "yet how

Mr. Booth's
dial, alert

still, respectful attitude, leaning against the sunto execute any command, seemingly careless what

goes on so long as he is ready when wanted, yet ever watching his prey with sly, sleepless vigilance." "A magnificent reader," was Irving's opinion of Booth; a comment that both praised and damned, though true as far as it went. But a few years after Booth's performances with Irving,

Marlowe, a young girl at the time, was to see his lago. she writes: "As I had never seen Booth, I did not know And him when he appeared on the scene. Suddenly I discovered a figure at the back of the stage intently watching the Moor.
Julia

You
act.

could see plainly that he contemplated some demoniac His eye and manner at once caught the attention of the house long before he had said a word. The look on his face was crafty and devil-like. This one incident proved to me
that there

was very much more in acting than the polished de-

"The Eloquence livery of lines." Miss Marlowe's subject was of Silence." To the public the Booth-Irving engagement was a contest, with patriotism involved and the talented rivals, pitted against each other, as good as brandishing the flags of their nations. The stars themselves did their best to play this aspect down, but it was what kept audiences flocking and talking, enabling Booth to write to Anderson of a "ponderous success," and to Bispham on May 16 that "business is still great." Although, so de"I've not done yet," he added, "being
myself
justice

pressed

by my domestic

troubles."

V
In her lucid intervals Mary knew she was dying. "O Asia," she whispered to her sister-in-law, "my life is going from me." Her disordered mind dwelt savagely on her stepdaughter. to hers she whispered on, with what Pulling Asia's face down

288
little

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

voice she had left, for her disease was destroying it, that her husband was loving and sweet when she had him alone, that it was Edwina who caused trouble, that Edwina "often shook and pinched her when she was asleep, woke her roughly and made awful faces at her to frighten her and dared her to tell her father. I mention this," wrote Ask in a note to her brother, "to show you how she may talk to a stranger who

would

believe her."

sent for and were in London, making a painful situation worse by siding with their deranged daughter in every family difference. Ask warned Booth to collect his wife's jewelry and lock it up, because if any were missing there was no telling whom Mary and her parents might accuse. Mary had complained to Ask querulously that she had begged and begged Edwina to put her jewels away for her and that Edwina would not. In spite of everything Asia's

The McVickers had been

Now in his letters home Booth expressed little sorrow. "Poor Mary," he called his wife occasionally. What was there more to say? He was growingly aware in himself of an immense not fatalism but a sense of God's will that was overwhelmingly, somberly resigned. Maggie Jefferson, Joe Jefferson's daughter, who had married an Englishman and was living in London, held out her album to him one with
a request to write his name and something suitable, he chose the lines, profoundly comfortless, from Richard II:

heart turned over with pity for the aying girl, so joyless and "Poor young thing," Ask wrote, "her brain is too great a burden for her fragile body."
loveless.

When

day

Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be With being nothing.

eas'd

Then he

Booth was negotiating with German managers for a visit to Germany, but before acting there he meant to tour the English provinces and was making arrangements with the English manager Wynn Miller; several actors had already been signed.
abruptly changed his plans, postponed everything

A
until
fall,

PAT ON THE BACK

289

from
take

his

though it was an expensive business to withdraw commitments. He and the McVickers had decided to

Mary home if she lived long enough. When her mind was
was
restless

and unhappy if Booth were not beside him to go with his wreck of a wife, not to send her away with her parents. The season with Irving ended on June 10, and on June 18 the whole party sailed from Liverpool. It was thought perclear, she

her, so the doctors advised

more fectly impossible that Mary could survive the trip by than a few days. Before leaving London Booth had written to York to reserve two state-rooms for Edwina Bispham in and himself on the Gallia, August 17, for the return journey.

New

CHAPTER

13

Kiss from the Heart

King Richard
III,

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths.

Act /, scene
/

AT THE Windsor Hotel

in

New York

swarm of

reporters stung Booth with questions, the same reporters that had buzzed around Madame Sarah Bernhardt on her own landing in New York eight months earlier. La Bernhardt had been equal to them. Narrowing her glittering eyes under her frizzy bangs and extracting some "red stuff" from her purse with which she touched up her lips, she had smartly parried questions like: "How much do you weigh, dressed and undressed?" "Is it true that you have four children and no husband?" Booth was equal to them too. When, with their exquisite
instinct for

prodding a tender

spot,

they demanded what he

really thought of Irving, he countered imperturbably that Irving was a delightful man, "always obliging, and always kind in every possible way. ... very superior actor."

had not been home three days when President Garfield was shot in the back by an assassin. It was the end of summer before Garfield died, and while he lingered and the doctors
290

He

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

29!

kept the nation on tenterhooks with their bulletins on his fluctuating condition, the papers raked up and paraded the details of the shooting from behind of President Lincoln
another
It

"mad

by

killer."

"That horrible business will never be buried!" cried Booth. was this sort of thing that kept Ask a permanent exile. Now a man named Nahum Capen wrote to Booth at the Windsor to demand new facts about the unmentionable brother, and Booth beaten into acquiescence, answered him. "Dear Sir, I can give you very little information regarding my brother John. I seldom saw him since his early boyhood in Baltimore. He was a rattle-pated fellow, filled with Quixotic We used to laugh at his patriotic froth whennotions. ever secession was discussed. That he was insane on that one He was of point, no one who knew him well can doubt.
.
.

a gentle, loving disposition, very boyish and full of fun, his mother's darling, and his deed and death crushed her spirit. He possessed rare dramatic talent, and would have made a brilliant mark in the theatrical world. ... All his theatrical friends speak of him as a poor, crazy boy, and such his family think of him." Booth was full of care about his mother, who at seventynine was failing fast. Rosalie, who nursed her, was fifty-eight; the world had always been too much for Rose. The two women, the aged and the aging, were living with Joseph, and Booth sent a message with his love through Laurence Hutton to Hutton's mother: "I wish she could spare a moment to see my poor old parent." How more than happy he would have been to look after them himself if his life had been arranged differently.

But by all that was wonderful, Mary seemed better. The much-feared ocean trip had superficially improved her. She looked well, ate with appetite, enjoyed being driven into the
doctors predicted she might live until which meant Booth must postpone going back to November, England. "It may be she will live years from what I've heard

country.

The American

lately of similar cases,"

he wrote to

his

English manager,

292

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Miller.

Wynn

"Doctors

know

nothing of such indomitable

women."
Still she was doomed, and he could only wish for her death, "or for my own." It was all to no purpose that he had come home with her. Since they left London she had turned against

him too. "Her antipathy to Edwina still exists," he told Hutton And a few heavily, "& she barely tolerates my presence." Booth drove me from her room a month weeks later: "Mrs.
ago
last Saturday & I've not seen her since." The McVickers had carried Mary off to a house they had

rented on

West

Fifty-third Street.

Booth and Edwina stayed

behind at the hotel "the parents have shut us out completely." Mrs. McVicker was greedily credulous of Mary's tales of Booth's cruelty, making no allowance for the girl's sick mind. But James McVicker had been a good friend to his son-in-law
marriage was cracking Booth suspected, or wrongly, a more sordid motive in both parents than rightly mere distrust of him. "Their object is to get valuable property I gave my wife and which they fear I will get back at her death and so they steel her against me. . . . From many little hints
once.

Now that the

had I think the old folks have induced Mary to will my Chicago property (in Mary's name) to them." It was an ugly mess. Booth was impatient to be back in harness, which was most unlike him, but work was the one
I've

thing

left.

"Idleness

would only

intensify the sadness that

is

hovering over

my domestic life."

On October 3 he opened an engagement at Booth's Theater. This at least went well. His season with Irving had flicked New York's interest in him. But the press got hold of his feud with his in-laws, and several papers jumped to take the McVickers' side and inform their readers, as something quite new, that Booth had been a drunkard and a bankrupt, that he had married Miss McVicker for her money and was such a brutally abusive husband that his dying wife flew into convulsions whenever he came near her.
Booth had
his dresser,

Henry

Flohr, mail

Hutton a copy of

Edwin Booth,

1889.

A KISS
the Dramatic

FROM THE HEART

293

wrote to Edwina,

He paid Mary's bills as they were presented, and returned them to McVicker, who duly sent hem back marked "Paid." When he left New York for the road Edwina went with him. Poor Mary's spurt of health was only on the surface. Booth was in Philadelphia on November 13, his forty-eighth birthday,

heard lately thousand dollars, and owed her father seventy-five thousand. He attributed this fable to the mother. "Isn't it funny? The old lady beats Edison in the way of inventing."

News "with McWickeffs abuse of me," and he who was visiting her Uncle Joe, that he had how he had squandered all Mary's money, ten

when he had

a telegram:

"Mrs. Booth died at five

o'clock."
still girlish body, in white satin with fine white crepe around the neck and sleeves, lay in the flower-crammed space between the front and back drawing rooms of the McVickers' rented house. The parents, relatives, and their friends were in one room, the Booths with their own following in the other. Booth sat near the head of the open rosewood casket, holding Edwina, who had not seen her stepmother since they

The

lisse

left the steamer, tightly

by the hand. And he shed tears. It was not so long ago that he had writen to Ask: "After ten years of marriage I find not a fault in my wife." Over Booth's bowed head the Reverend Robert

who was a McVickerite, intoned a eulogy

Collyer,

without saying outright anything against her husband, implied volumes. Eyebrows were raised all over both drawing rooms, but Booth sat shielding his eyes with his free hand and gave no sign of having noticed. Hutton and Winter kept him company
of

Mary that,

where Mary was buried on a dark, of steady rain. "Now, what next discomfort?" he gusty day " wrote to Will Bispham, another loyal friend, 'What more sorrow claims acquaintance at my hand which I know not?' . . . Well, I have tried to be strong in all my sufferings, but I fear that I have been most feeble."

on the

train to Chicago,

Adam Badeau, back in his own country after years lived abroad, had spent the night with Booth in New York between

294

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

the funeral and the burial trip. Often while he was in Europe and watched some royal personage hold a levee or ride in
procession,

Badeau had been reminded of

his friend

Booth

acting the king or prince onstage. "No Guelph or Bourbon/' said Badeau, "went through his part with greater dignity or than the young American who had never been at court; grace the magic of genius arrayed him in a majesty which all the

grandeur could not inspire." This was "that majesty, that look above the world," Booth's father in his youth had hungered for and found wanting in the first real king he set eyes on. Now Badeau was struck by the dignity and self-control of the man he had known long ago as a headstrong,
dissipated,

reality of their

often nervously irascible boy. Booth's expression had gained greatly in strength, but there was nothing young about him

any longer; the last freshness of youth had gone. His features were worn and hardened, a little coarsened, with the actor's stamp of years of use. His hair had receded, his face was heavier, his jaw squarer. Barring his father's marks of dissipation, Booth's own face had become much like his father's in
middle age.
II

papers went on blackening Booth in his domestic life, printing items that originated with the McVickers and were

The

added to by any malicious

actor.

journalist

who had

it

in for the

cious
tight,"

The donk!"

Clippings Booth guessed, "else he tried to disguise his writing. 5

McVicker himself occasionally sent his son-in-law vifrom the papers through the mail, "sent while

Edwina, not used to slanderous attacks, having been a child at the time of her uncle's crime, was beside herself with hurt and rage and implored her father to contradict the stories.

Booth only shook

admitted that
ness
is

head and even smiled. But to Hutton he ever feel anxious about in this beastly busion Edwina's account. If I should die before all this
his
"all I

A KISS
slander

FROM THE HEART

295

is cleared from my reputation it will be a life-long If I were vindictive I could tell sorrow for her. my story and expose the McVickers to my heart's content, but'l keep
.

old Satan behind

me

as well as I

can

& will be

patient."

me

"Compassion for poor Mary alone has kept me silent," he explained to Barrett, "but consideration for Edwina may force
to expose, not only the McVickers' villainy, but poor Mary's insane wickedness." He had first written "poor Mary's
line

wickedness," then went back and inserted "insane" with a

under it. His friends were under no such constraint. Booth and Edwina were in Boston when an unsigned article by a journalist named Junius Henri Browne, who evidently knew more of Booth than Booth knew of him, appeared in the Boston Herald refuting the slanders. After describing in a balanced way what the reserved, quiet-loving Booth had had to put up with from his well-meaning but officious little wife long before her

disorder showed itself^ Browne's article went on: "Booth never spoke of the incongruity between them; he was always patient, tender, chivalrous, and in nearly all cases allowed her to have not afraid of as her self-disciplined husbands,

way,

strong,

Booth was subbeing thought hen-pecked, always do. Mrs. their continuance . . During ject to periodic derangements. she was entirely irresponsible. ... good deal of the time who could hardly be conshe was a lunatic, and a lunatic
.

trolled."

After her return from Europe, said Browne, Mary "began to disclose a marked aversion" to Booth. "She refused to reof her husband and, as his presence in her chamber threw her into convulsions of rage, he at last, after trying in every way to placate her, kept carefully out of her sight. But he still took every care of her." To account for the parents' venom: "There may have been
ceive the
visits

the event of Mrs. Booth's death, the whole, or part, of what Booth had given her and he had been very liberal would

some disagreement concerning

financial questions, because in

PRINCE OF PLAYERS have gone according to the particular kw of the State, to her
296
modier, Mrs. McVicker. This lady has . . . hated Booth long and bitterly and has, by her energetic manifestation of it, earned from him some degree of reciprocity."
for

While the McVickers were branding him a mercenary out what he could get from their helpless daughter, Booth was

From

ment in the

heart of the city a nest for two. He was doomed to hotel life himself at present. He wanted the flat for a special friend of his, "a poor player, who struts, etc., but one I love
all the tenderness a son might bear for a father one of the oldest and the dearest of duffers the good God ever

busy making certain arrangements by letter with Bispham. the Hotel Vendome in Boston he wrote to ask Bispham in New York to look out for a flat of four or five cozy rooms." To Booth a home was always a place that was small and cozy. His idea of home was romantic as a calendar picture: a thatched cottage deep in the countryside or a dot of an apart-

with

made." This was Anderson, whom Booth had persuaded to come back East and who was on tour with him. "He approacheth now the time," said Booth, "when the oil burneth low and the wick waxeth brief. He wants to settle in New York his dear old wife and he and I want them to settle near me. Can you give me an idea of rent, cost of furniture, servant's wages, and other little details requisite for the comfort of a dear old
. . .

couple of antique babies?" Not until a second letter ("more about my 'flat' friends") did Bispham discover it was Booth who meant to pay for everything. "This entre nous. I thought I'd relieve them of all cares for die future. No one but you, they, and I are to know the facts, and even you must be ignorant as far as they know."

Park Theater. He had his with him this time, and on Christmas troupe traveling Eve, 1 88 1, he invited everyone to a late holiday supper in his rooms at the Vendome. At twelve o'clock Edwina kissed him and departed. The others sat on, to him reminisce.
at Boston's

own

Booth was playing

listening

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

"

*97

He

The exclaimed happily: "Yes, my brother John and I words withered on his lips. He brushed his hand across his eyes but the stricken company could see the tears as he corrected " himself. "Yes, my unfortunate brother John From Albany on April 14 he wrote to Hutton: "In this a hotel, 22 years ago, I passed my first marriage night. What memoworld of memories is conjured up." He had time for his the ries, having suddenly great trouble in sleeping, and after friends, play would sit writing long letters to his scattered then read through the hours left until dawn.
The

Edwina days, to make up, were almost gay. He and in a private hotel-car with piano and bookcase, the traveled rest of the troupe in a special Pullman. Booth often asked the
others in to lunch and afterward, while they bounded along over the rough roadbed, Edwina would rattle the piano, Louisa

Eldridge, a veteran trouper called "Aunty" by everybody, would give them a song, and the two old Andersons (Mrs. Anderson had been allowed to come for the trip, though she

wasn't acting) would nod their heads in time. Booth simply Edwatched, his eyes dwelling on his daughter. Whenever close wina stopped playing she hurried over to him. They sat beside each other and always with some comforting contact of arm through arm or hand in hand. Edwina They must make the most of their rime together. Calvert Vaux, was engaged to young Downing Vaux, son of the the architect and landscape gardener who had designed was not to be married immediPark. She plans for Central to sail with her father for Europe in Mayately, and expected New York about two weeks before their sailing But back in died. date she came down with pleuropneumonia. She almost Booth, alternating between wild anxiety and a dreadful, genuine calm for he had long anticipated die death of his beloved
reand only child as the logical last blow fate might have in Brutus serve kept trying to fortify himself by saying over
stoic lines:

With
I

die once, meditating that she must have the patience to endure it now.

298

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
gave extraordinarily
all.

They
after

little

comfort.

14 they were able to sail before the sailing Booth renewed a friendship Just long at a standstill and harking back to a remote, young, tumultuous self his friendship with Richard and Elizabeth

Edwina improved, and on June

Stoddard.

During their estrangement of almost twenty years he had once, as was inevitable, met Elizabeth Stoddard head on at a

Now

party, had gazed into "her cold eye, and bowed to her coldly." Mrs. Stoddard was the first to write. He answered her
letter

on June
is

i,

1882.

"Dear

TLisbeth,
I

no

mercy

required: hope I'm sure we shall, for I am older, sedater, not though mayhap wiser, and I suspect that you and Richard be so also. . . Dear, dear Mollie! Sne lives again, thank God! in her good daughter,
.

we

are friends and

forgiveness, no will ever be so.

whom I am sure you will love."

Ill

Booth was bursting with spirits on shipboard. Julia Vaux, Edwina's future sister-in-law, was traveling with them, and he tramped the deck with a girl on either arm. He wrote to Anderson:

He

Davy

ahoy! I'm afloat!

in

opened

you old bloat!" London on June 26 at the Adelphi Theater

playing Richelieu. Barrett, Winter, and Aldrich were in London too, and Hutton soon joined them. Hutton's mother had died in the spring, and the desolate bachelor did not forget how in the first hours after her death Booth had stolen in to put his

arms around him and whispered: "I know,

Arriving in

my boy,

know."

but poorly. could help it, ate stodgy foods, and had begun to have dizzy His doctor told him he must get outdoors more, so Hutspells. ton made it his business to walk to and from the theater with

London after Booth, Hutton found him cheerful Booth smoked too much, took no exercise if he

him every night. Late one when the moon whitened the whole lovely evening and Aldrich met them on the way home, city, Barrett, Winter, and the five Americans wandered into the cloisters of West-

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

299

pass.

Booth, who was forty-eight, began to speak musingly of the men, once so eager, once so celebrated, whose dust lay under

minster Abbey. helmeted policeman nodded and let them The place was deserted. The bell in the clock tower chimed the quarters as they drifted from one tomb to another.

had some small reputation to hug to himself, were plunged into deep seriousness and paced back to their lodgings almost without a word. They made another and a very different night of it when this world was all too much with them. Booth mentioned it
afterward in anguish to Hutton: "I fear I made a fool of myself. It's a pity that my poor brain cannot withstand the least stimulus; a child's can safely carry that which floors me. I suffer so intensely, too, long after the fun is over. As I look back to that evening my mind is filled with all sorts of disgusting things. It seems that ever since the Delmonico breakfast my head has been weaker than before. Tell me the worst I said and did. I know I made an ass of myself and among the very people whose respect I value. I can't laugh at such slips as jokes they are agonies to me. I find that simple water is my only safe tipple I stuck to it for years & must let it float me to the end, I suppose. It's rather difficult to be jolly on cold water and to get up the spirit for tragic acting without stimulant now & then.

whom

the stones: Dr. Johnson; Sheridan, the sparkling playwright; Garrick, greatest of English actors. The men, each of
living

No more o' that."

son.

Business at the Adelphi was "English!" he joked to AnderThe entire profits for his six weeks there amounted to five

hundred dollars. But the critics were kinder than the year before, and the sparse houses were friendly. "Don't fret if you don't get work," he soothed Anderson, who was unemployed and hated his leisure. "When funds run short, let me know." In August he took the girls on a quick trip to the continent* They saw Die Jungfrau by moonlight, and at Bingen in Germany they sampled the beer (at least Booth did); it was dark,
creamy, maddeningly
satisfying. In

on

his provincial tour,

England again, he set off which had been deferred dangerously

300

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

same ground with

had gone over much of the long, because in the interval Irving his spectacular Lyceum productions. Booth's English manager had simply smiled when Booth de-

scribed the "good stock scenery" he wanted to have built to dear sir, won't draw a handful take with him. "Shakespeare, of people in the provinces unless it's presented as Mr. Irving gives it at the Lyceum. Mr. Irving has been through those same

my

places with the Lyceum scenery, and the people will never go to see Shakespeare again unless it's equally well put on. They'll

Mr. Irving's." September, Booth finished in BirmingStarting ham three months later after covering most of England as well as Dublin and the main Scottish cities. The tour was fun, even though it barely paid expenses, even though in Liverpool he was so nervously exhausted that he finally saw a doctor, who
say your show
isn't as

handsome

as

in Sheffield in

prescribed absolute rest, the logical follow.

remedy

impossible to

fiance, Downing Vaux, joined them in London in but their Christmas was only half merry, for the December,

Edwina's

young man was far from well. As an actor, Booth was through with London, doubted if he would ever act there again. "I could never be made "fashionabler So off with England, on to Germany where, his instinct told him, had told him for years, he would prosper. He dared not trust instinct. He was to open in Berlin at the Victoria Theater the middle of January, "open and shut, too, he perhaps," warned Anderson and himself. "It may be a startling fizzle/'

of the Victoria had Certainly it began badly. a comic hit called Frau Venus running and refused to close it. He insisted Booth would have to wait. Booth was in despair when his German agent hastened in to tell him that the Residenz Theater was available owing to the sudden illness of the woman star who was to open there. Booth signed at once with the manager of the Residenz, which was a smaller house

IV The manager

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

less cash,

301

than the Victoria, promising

elegant.

but more intimate and

He was
the

to act in English, the others in German.

Shakespeare.

company had never done

Now

handed copies of Hamlet, Prinz von Danewark and ordered to study their parts. At dress rehearsal Booth noticed that the First Actor in the band of Players visiting Elsinore was got up as a very old party with a white beard to his waist. Through an interpreter he asked the man why on earth he had made himself so decrepit. "In America the First Actor is always played
as

Most of they were

much

younger."

said the German, waving his translation, "Shakespeare himself is my authority, for does he not have Hamlet address the First Actor as 'old friend'?"

"Oh,"

Booth explained that in English this isn't taken literally, but the German's finger froze to the text. He beamed and nodded. Hamlet says "old," the Shakespeare meant "old," nicht? The German star Ludwig was appearing as Hamlet at the Royal Theater. The American had already been advertised (Erste Gastdarstettung des Herrn Edwin Booth), and Ludwig,
a fine actor in a monumental way, was determined to outdo him. Ludwig's Hamlet was on the order of Forrest's. He marched up and down the stage flexing his muscles and trumpeting,
"Sein oder Nichtsein?

and the delighted Berliners, who were used to this method, predicted that "Booze could never equal him." Their disbelief

showed

in the attitude of the Residenz stage director, who ran the rehearsals like a Prussian drill master and treated Booth

with cold,
It

was Christmas-card weather, snowy and crisp. On openlittle Residenz was packed. ing night, January n, 1883, the the introductory scene between Horatio and the solDuring
diers a couple of the actors, not at ease in costume plays, tripped over their swords and the audience guffawed. As the curtain rose a second time, every opera glass in the house swerved

hostile politeness.

302

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

still as a statue with simultaneously to focus on Booth, sitting his dark head bowed, the most somber of all stage Hamlets. He lifted his head and swept the audience with far-seeing eyes

as the

King turned on him: Dock nun^ mein Vetter Hamlet und mein Sohn.

And he gave the famous first aside:

little

more than kin, and

less

than kind.

peculiarly in England, struck home in Germany.

These were the first words to be spoken in English and in a style utterly different from that of the other actors. To the Americans in the theater it seemed like a message straight from their own country. More remarkably, the one short foreign tears into the Germans' eyes. Bootn's phrase brought instant moving quality, which had so often missed its mark

Accustomed though they were to a loud, declamatory manner, the emotional Germans and intensity that instinctively responded to the grandeur
underlay Booth's quietness. The production blundered on. Ophelia was so silly in her mad scene that the audience lay back and laughed. Booth

strode through his part, "dignified, gentle, handsome and inspired,"

wrote an American there. had mentally to recite in English what the rest were saying in German. When they stopped he took the pause for his cue and began his own speech. He slipped just once, when in the graveyard scene he started a fraction ahead of time, then

He

quickly recovered himself; hardly anyone noticed the mistake. The strain on him was made worse by the dead silence in front. No heartening applause interrupted the scenes; there was only a subdued "bravo" now and then. But as the final drop fell, the other actors stood rooted and strangely attentive, and the Prussian stage director, who had been so cold to Booth, ran out from the wing, bent his knees, seized Booth's hand to bring it to his lips and said simply: "Herr Meister!" It never took much to make Booth's eyes moist. The intently watching actors were already weeping. The front of the house

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

topping

303

was white with handkerchiefs. Now the long delayed demonstration broke out with "bravo" on "bravo" the handrecalled twenty-four times, and after the austill dience, jabbering with excitement, had drained out of the there were more tributes theater, backstage. The flushed actors close around him. One after another kissed him pressed
claps.

Booth was

on both cheeks, heedless of his look of distress, head and plaintive cries of, "Mind the paint!" And they shouted: "Danke! Danke!"

they

his flung-back

"They thanked me over and over," wrote Booth, who was too stirred up to sleep, later this same night to William Winter, "for what I know not." The reviews next morning were lyrical with praise. Caricatures blossomed in the shop windows showing Ludwig bidding a forlorn auf iviedersehen to the Tragic Muse. Wrote Oscar Welten in the Tdgliche Berliner Rjmdschau: "Booth is the best Hamlet I have ever seen. . . . You can understand him perfectly even though you may not know a single word of what
he utters."

The
tical

American,

Staatsbiirger Zeitung: we ask he that

"How
is

said to

can the eminently prachave ropes for nerves

be in sympathy with the most subtle character that a poet ever created? The spiritual, sublimated Hamlet soul, with all how can its nervous, dreamlike and melancholy attributes be conceived by such a man? For an answer, look at Edwin this
Booth."

The Berliner Fremdenblatt: "Booth's Hamlet is a masterpiece . . of the actor's genius . . . towering above all his rivals. The curtain fell upon the most wonderful impersonation of Hamlet that Berlin has ever seen. . . This Hamlet was not
.

played, but lived"

Booth was used to applause in all forms. It seemed as though he had had his first taste through his father, having been with his father so long. But the solemn adoration and reverence actors was a new experiheaped on him now by the German he told Anderson. "I feel ence, "and stimulates me strangely," more like acting than I have felt for years."

304

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

This was in spite of new cause for sorrow. Downing Vaux, who had come on to Berlin with them, from being nervously disturbed when he left New York had sunk into an alarming was affected. All his faculties were deadapathy. His memory and he showed no more interest in the wistful Edwina ened, than in his sister Julia. Three times in Berlin Booth called in Dr. Leyden, the great German specialist in diseases of the nerves and brain. It was finally thought best to send the young man back to America with his sister. To see Edwina so forlorn took the edge off Booth's success, "or rather my^ enjoyment . She is lonely & depressed of course having no comof it. but old fogy me." panion He played King Lear, lago, and Othello all received with Crown Prince and Princess came to see him. delight. The was in the offing at which he was to be precourt
.
.

reception sented to Emperor Wilhelm and a command performance was talked of. Then Prince Karl, the Emperor's brother, died, cutand leaving Booth to fume to ting short these bright prospects that "one of those little German princes had to his friends die, the stupid jackass, and the Court went into mourning."

conquest remained dazzling, peerless. When he the Residenz actors presented him with a silver laurel wreath inscribed "To Edwin Booth, the unrivaled Tragedian." In Hamburg, where he pkyed next, the press went wild, and the audience formed a passageway from the lobby to his him to run the gauntlet while they clutched carriage, forcing an ordeal for a man who loathed tried to kiss him at and

His

artistic

left Berlin

being pawed.

The

years old

stage director of the Hamburg Theater, seventy-seven he had been a pupil of Cudwig Devrient's, Ger-

many's greatest tragedian threw his arms around the American, who seemed like a boy to him, and called him "Meister"

The almost equally antique stage manager, who remembered Talma, titan of the French stage during the Revolution and Empire, exulted that Booth was Talma's peer "Afeister, Master!"

The little girl pages in the Hamburg Theater waylaid Booth

A KISS

FROM THE HEART

305

after King Lear and murmured bashfully: "Mr. Booth, you make us cry. We do want so much to kiss you."
in Bremen, in Hanover, and Leipzig. It must be confessed that while the houses were excellent, they were not always cram-full. "As it is in England," Booth wrote to Bispham, "no money is to be made here. That, however, I did not expect." He had earned something more. Americans abroad grew used to the raptures of their German friends: "Ihr Landsmmn! Der Edwin Booze!" The tokens poured in. In Hamburg it was a silver spray of laurel. In Bremen a second laurel wreath was offered him on a velvet cushion by a young actress while the theater director read out a fulsome speech and the actors, weeping and kissing, made a circle around the venerable, whitebearded Booth, dressed in King Lear's robes, who looked frightened to death and stammered his thanks. In Hanover it

And so it went:

was a

silver goblet; in Leipzig still another laurel wreath, as well as a death mask of the mighty Devrient. In one of the cities after a matinee, women from the audience swarmed up on the stage and overwhelmed him as he stood, this time young and in his Hamlet sables. They formed a line and filed past. Each thrust out her hand to be shaken, then her face, shiny with expectancy, to be kissed. When he told the story afterward to Kitty Molony, Booth's own face unconsciously froze into the trapped expression it must have worn then. Finally an uneasy-looking lady rustled into position. She poked out her fingertips. Booth accepted them, swayed forward mechanically getting ready for the salute, but she flinched.

"I

am

an American!"
I

"Oh,

beg your pardon, and thank you so very much."

In March he was in Dresden on his way to Vienna. He did not act in Dresden, but sent a letter from there to Richard and
Elizabeth Stoddard.

He was writing of Mary, his first Mary whom they had known, thinking of her in relation to this wondrous success of his. He could look back on her calmly now,
almost without a sigh, as of a dream of happiness he had had

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
"I

when young.

know that

dear Mollie foresaw

my present

what shall I call it? condition, but she often feared that I would 'culminate' too soon. It may be the vanity of age but I fancy that I am still going on & that my work is better & fuller

now

than ever."

Vienna was his last stand. And there at first the critics hung back a little. They didn't altogether admire his Hamlet, didn't consider his idyllic Othello powerftil enough. But his King Lear was a triumph beyond any that had gone before. During Lear's mad scenes and his recognition of Cordelia all restraint in the audience was shattered, and even the listening actors sobbed in the wings and hugged one another and whispered raptly: "Ach, wie shon! Und sein Organ!" On his last night in Vienna Booth was given the fourth and finest of his laurel wreaths. Its leaves were gold and silver and on each one was etched the name of a member of the company. The Viennese begged him to stay on. The German managers implored him to come once more. Russia, Italy, France, and Spain sent invitations, but he refused them "I am thoroughly tired and yearn for rest." He had had his dream of acting in Germany. Mingled with his exhaustion and the reaction or depression after the exciting strain was his inkling that this season of late-come, perfect
triumph had,
self-sufficient like those

golden years in Calfornia, a peculiar, happiness not to be pursued or known again.

PART SEVEN

CHAPTER

14

Gray Hair
Hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this -face of mme And made no deeper wounds? King Richard II, Act IV, scene i

he could.

morning when with a thrill he recognized the actor threading his way down. It was brilliantly sunny. The steep street was white with rutted snow, and on Boston Common to Copeland's left the undinted drifts glistened. There must have been other people in sight, but Copeland could never remember them. The picture that bedded itself in his mind was of a solitary black figure moving slowly toward him down the glittering slope through this world of whiteness. And though young Copeland stared and stared, almost taking off his hat on an impulse of reverence, the great man seemed
not to notice him, "seemed," Copeland writes, "to be looking in, not out, with the curious introverted gaze of his own Ham-

He was trudging up Park Street in Boston one winter

Townsend Copeland saw Booth

i88o*s that a certain Harvard fresh out of the academic mill, had his graduate, only glimpse of Edwin Booth offstage. Charles

IT

WAS in the middle

onstage whenever

310
let.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
... As he came toward me,
little

stepping lightly though not his hands in his pockets, he looked like Hamlet in a great-coat. I thought then that I had never seen so sad a face, and I have never yet beheld a sadder
quickly, his head a

bent and

one."

Booth had had his winter home in Boston since the autumn of 1883. Back from Germany at the end of May that year his one first thought had been to make a place somewhere for himself and Edwina. He had bought land on the rocky Rhode Island shore two or three miles outside Newport, had built a cottage, and they had spent the summer there. He called the place "Boothden." Only a few miles away was Oak Glen, the Samuel

Howes' farm. It was years since Julia Ward Howe had seen so much of her pet actor and his little girl, who at twenty-one was
very

like her mother, slender and light of step, with eyes full of soul, and a gentle, winsome manner. Whenever Booth let fall Edwina's name his voice was reserved, but the expression of his face adored her. The Howes' large family and Booth's small one of father and daughter had a picnic together under the trees by a brook at Oak Glen. Booth and Edwina had been still over in Europe when word was sent Booth that Downing Vaux was much worse. On their return, Edwina's engagement was dissolved. Booth had been at a loss at first how to break the terrible news to her. Later he thought thankfully of the danger she had escaped, but at the time "God help us!" he cried. "What a curse is on the Booths, and for what? must go back beyond any records that I have found for the cause of all the horrors that are heaped on us! " They stayed at Boothden well into the fall. In the shortening evenings he sat with his daughter by the Franklin stove that radiated comfort into the room, and he tried to help her weave new plans for happiness "the interest she has felt in this lovely little house I've . . given her has diverted her mind though of course she has her moments of depression. I do all I can to keep her up."

We

On

Manchester.

September 17 Junius Booth died of Bright's disease in Edwin and Joe went on for the funeral, but their

GRAY HAIR
go, and Rose stayed to nurse her. Of Junius' children, four were living: Blanche, his daughter by his first wife, Clementine; Marion, his daughter by Harriet; and his sons Junius III and Not one of them
frail to

mother was too

genius, though Blanche and Sydney were successful in the theater. Junius III had the taint of fairly strangeness from his grandfather Booth. Later, in middle life, he was to kill his wife and himself in their in

showed the Booth

Sydney by Agnes.

New Jersey town where she was stranded. Booth's old friend from California, Ferdinand Ewer, died soon after Junius, leaving his wife and children in real need. Booth wrote to Mrs. Ewer immediately to offer her with the utmost delicacy "some little aid. ... I beg that you will not deny me the privilege of doing for you what he would have done for mine in similar circumstances." In September or October he bought a winter house in Boston for himself and Edwina to settle in "for aye." It was at 29 Chestnut Street on select Beacon Hill, a gray stone mansion built sideways to the street with a smart iron fence hugging its grass plot and panes of purple glass in the drawing-room windows. Up from Newport, he took Edwina the long drive out to Dorchester to see a much smaller wooden house overlooking the bay, where she had lived once, though she had no memory of it.
in the

England, where he ran a movie house. Of Marion, called "Marie," her uncle Edwin wrote to Anderson at the time of June's death that "she's a jolly dunce & should be incarcerated in some mild asylum for dunderheads. Poor I girl! suppose her 'dear, sweet, old, darling, beloved, sugaruncle' will have to care for her & be bored to madness for plum his reward." At his own death Booth left Marie ten thousand dollars. She could use the money, having been deserted by her actor-husband and forced to appeal to the overseer of the poor
lingsea,

lodgings

Bright-

Booth's Theater had given up the struggle. It had closed its doors forever on April 30, 1883, with the same play that so spectacularly opened them. Juliet this time was the Polish actress Helena Modjeska; Romeo was Maurice Barrymore.

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Workmen pulled apart and tore down the building and a block
of shops replaced it. Booth's Theater was no more. But the theater in general flourished. New names were in the headlines: LILLIAN RUSSELL, which conjured up a picture of round arms, bovine eyes, and bee-stung mouth; ADA REHAN
(titian hair

and proud shoulders) ; MINNIE MADDERN, who was kter Mrs. Fiske; RICHARD MANSFIELD; ROBERT BRUCE MANTELL. In October of this year Henry Irving with Ellen Terry and the Lyceum company invaded America. Irving's stock was booming in his own land where Prime Minister Gladstone had recently put out feelers: Would Mr. Irving accept a it did him knighthood, if offered? Irving becomingly declined; to have been made the offer. He opened no harm, though, in New York in The Bells, which he followed up with six more and cast and directed with productions, beautifully mounted, a finish new to this public. Every one was a success. Then he started out on a triumphant tour. On November 5 Booth opened his own season in Boston. It was a fine engagement; all the same, that English visitor had made a difference. Disloyally the New York Times declared itself astonished "that Mr. Booth should lag so far behind other The example set by Mr. actors in enterprise and courage. not to be lost upon him altogether. Public taste is, Irving ought we are convinced, growing beyond Mr. Booth's dull and slow
.
. .

methods/'

Booth tried to avoid appearing in New York at the same time as Irving, which might look like rivalry. In the end their schedules did conflict, "but New York," Booth was sure, "is swath big enough for both and doubtless he will cut a broader the rage. Irving was new, English, "interthan I." Irving was waited for. How esting." Every new role of his was eagerly

would he do Hamlet? Yet in the midst of the Irving furor and the talking down of the native product that went with it, someone who signed herself simply "Gwendolen" wrote to the Boston Transcript to ask: "With such an actor of our very own, why should we envy London its possession of Henry Irving?" Then Gwendolen

GRAY HAIR

313

quoted from Mrs. Howe's poem "Hamlet at the Boston Theater," written of Booth in 1858:

And, beautiful as dreams of maidenhood That doubt defy,

Young Hamlet, with

his forehead

And

grief-subdued,

visioning eye.

Father and daughter spent the summer of 1884 at Boothden. Their red-roofed cottage, angular with dormers and by this second summer overrun with ivy, was perched on a slope above the Seaconnet River. Upriver northward lay Tiverton Heights and to the south the glittering Atlantic. Westward, outside the window of the room Booth used as his den, were the shining farms and orderly meadows of Middletown and Portsmouth* In his yacht, christened the Edwina^ Booth cruised on the river and into the ocean as far as West Island or even beyond. The little yacht and a couple of rowboats were stored in a boathouse and rolled to and from the river on a toylike marine railway with one tram car. Near the river's edge stood the reproduction of an old Norman mill built from a sketch he had brought back from Europe. It made a landmark seen for miles, and on foggy nights when he was out in the yacht, Edwina climbed the spiral staircase that ran around the outside of the sailcloth hammill and hung a lantern in an upper window. mock with perpendicular ends and a flat bottom was set up in the wide porch on the river-side of the cottage. This could be closed at the sides and folded over at the top. Booth would lie

in

it for hours, smoking and dozing. Edwina let him rest. His lawns were as velvety and unblemished as any in the was used for farming. He had an county. About half the estate and overseer, and Boothden's own eggs, butter, chickens, when he was in were sent him regularly asparagus in season Boston. The surplus was sold. The costs outdid the profits, but it

was a constant source of

had

As his associates among the gentlemen farmers of Rhode Island,

the son of a father who pleasure to earth with his own hands. loved to dig in the red Maryland

Booth had Ward McAllister and Cornelius Vanderbilt. So here

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS

he was, with his mansion in Boston and his model farm at Newport. He had come a long way.

n
One good tour deserves another. This autumn of 1 884 Irving
and Terry made their second assault on the United States. time in New York. His melanIrving did Hamlet for the first Booth's in choly prince, who had been originally influenced by out a less poetic fellow than Manchester in 1861, had turned
Booth's, but definitely "interesting," having his own astringent flavor, and he was received with applause and good words. Once again it was Irving here and Irving there and "have you seen Irving?" Booth and Edwina were living congenially in Boston at 29

Chestnut Street and, possibly to compete with Irving, Booth several parts he hadn't played for years. He took Pescara, Sir Edward Mortimer, and Sir Giles Overreach out of mothballs, and doggedly reviewed Claude Melnotte and Ruy Bias, though these were young men's roles. His Negro housewoman Julia, peering through doors left his hands half-open, used to see .him at work, watch him race his hair, which had broad streaks of gray in it, flip through open the playbook, give a sharp glance, then bang the book shut, toss it on the table, nervously smooth its cover and begin to stalk up and down. If it were very late he studied up in his bedroom, where a crazy quilt Mrs. Anderson had made for him was spread over the bed, and a cloth that had been Anderson's and used to lie on their big table at the "Ranch" was on the night table. For Anderson, dear Davy, was dead after a long

was conning over

illness.

Booth acted in New York in January, 1885. dispatch sent the Boston Gazette reported dourly "there is not much that is new to say of Mr. Booth, except that he has grown stouter and grayer, and that there are signs of thinness in his hair." All along the road this spring his houses were excellent, though, as he was getting a guarantee regardless of the box office, he could only guess at the receipts. If Irving had hurt

GRAY HAIR
him, it was hard to see just how. Although blunt comparisons in living's favor cropped out in print, Booth's power to draw

had never been stronger. In spite of his gray hair many people thought his acting showed a new life and vigor over what it had been for the past ten years. All this was true. Yet looking back afterward, Winter, the dean now of New York critics and a friend of both saw
actors,

clearly that Booth's triumph in Germany had been his zenith, and that with Henry Irving's success in America Booth's decline began. at first, the movement was in

Imperceptible

progress. "Booth's star/' said Winter, "had passed its meridian and was beginning to descend." Edwina was to be married in May to Ignatius Grossmann, a Hungarian. Grossmann had taught languages in a England college and then become a stock broker. His into the

New

Booths' world was through his who under the name of Maurice Neville. Booth wrote to played Edwina on April 7: "Darling, I do not, I cannot allow my mind to dwell on the fact that we must be parted. The pain 01 it will

entry actor-brother Maurice,

be enough when
it

it

comes, yet

am

confident

like a bitter

wholesome effect." And next day, after hearing from her: "Darling, if Ignatius and I were both absent from you at the same time it might tax
draught

will have a

you
be

sorely to provide us both with love-letters. Perhaps he'd jealous if he read mine."
that his

The engraved announcements by Mr. Edwin Booth

daughter Edwina had been married on May 16, 1885, were issued from 29 Chestnut Street, where the marriage took place.

The irreproachable correctness of his daughter's wedding may have partly made up to Booth for the occasions in his family when the marriage knot had been tied late or not at all And now he was really alone. "My darling," he wrote to Edwina, a bride of eight days, "I can't tell you just how I feel the separation has been a wrench to my nerves; but when in the midst of my selfishness the thought comes of your happiness
and the good that will come to you, I cease to grieve."

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PRINCE OF PLAYERS
couple had landed in England.

New York to see them sail, then brought himself back to Boston
alone.

The happy

He

had gone to

"Now that you are safe over the sea, and the worst (my
is

coming home)
think of

over, I
all

am

as jolly as a shoebrush.

You must

me

as

not at

lonesome."

den he read and wrote late by the light of a handsome house fell quiet green-shaded lamp, while the large, around him. He was used to sitting alone at night and this

At

night in his

helped the illusion that his daughter lay asleep upstairs. Dr. Horace Furness was publishing a special edition of and had asked Shakespeare with erudite notes on the plays Booth to give his ideas on Othello and The Merchant. Booth wrote out what thoughts he had, advancing them with con" 'tis absurd for me to fidence and timidity mixed say this to who know more of Shakespeare in a moment than I've you, learned in thirty years." For he had never lived down, never
^

down, his awe of learning. What were his poor compared to the lore of a scholar like Furness with a caravan of degrees after his name? In June Booth went down to New York to help his mother and Rosalie move from Joseph's in Long Branch to a house in the city on West Twenty-third Street. At forty-five Joe was to go on with optimistically enrolling in New York University

would

live

player's intuitions

study of medicine, dropped years before. Recently old Mrs. Booth had fallen and broken her leg, a disaster at her age, and now in New York was a chair-ridden invalid. Booth wheeled her through the new rooms. Here at least there would be more "pass" for her to watch from the window and neighbors to wave at the heavy old face that
his

nodded slowly back.

this summer he was flooded with guests, deinvited to keep himself busy, and yet in spite of them liberately he sometimes slept clear through the sparkling summer morn-

At Newport

ings until time for lunch, and after dinner he slept again, slept fast and woke unrefreshed. Perhaps he had overdone the com-

pany.

Even writing

been

fitted

letters was harder than usual, and he had with pince-nez for reading and writing and found

them a trial

GRAY HAIR 317 "the big D glasses/' they kept falling off. He behow
he was.

gan to wire his answers to letters except to Edwina to whom he always wrote, though less often than formerly until in a
cabled asking fright she
at last

The

tide of

summer

end of August he could tell the one turned in his thoughts: "I am counting the days between us now most not the weeks or months any more. Today next month I hope to have you here."
and
at the

August he had visited Barrett in Cohasset, Massaand his wife laughed a great deal together, Booth discovered, and Barrett and his children did sports and
Earlier in
chusetts. Barrett

romped
visitor,

half the

drawn temporarily

day over the tawny Cohasset rocks. The into the family circle, found it

"very happy, and they have a cozy little home here." In the bosom of his home Barrett was relaxed and loving. But the fire that is never quenched burned in him still, and one afternoon as he and Booth sat gossiping with friends, Barrett said inbe willing to act without making any tensely that he would for fifty years if by then he would be considered the money head of his profession. Booth, who had been skimming the

the others talked, laid it down, lifted off his new paper while his brows with the relief, asked: "Well, pince-nez and, arching after you get this leadership, what do you think it's Larry,

worth?"
Barrett snapped back: "You ought to know. You have it." Booth shook his head. "Leadership has its thorns." The brooding Barrett's fingers itched to feel those thorns. The more remarkable then that he should have proposed to

Booth what he did during this visit. Why, he suggested, shouldn't he and Booth make a series of totirs together, employand with himself in charge of the busiing a strong company ness details Booth found unbearable? It would be the theatrical of Booth and Barrett, but in casting and billing he,
partnership
Barrett,

would take second place. Booth's support had been so outstandingly bad lately that the of shirking comparison with first-rate actors. press accused him

318

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
his productions

And
press.

"Wretched

looked dingy, especially after Irving's. barked the costumes! stage setting, slop-shop His last manager, R. M. Field of Boston, had done really
5'

over. It was partly disgracefully by him in the season just Booth's own fault. Making his arrangements with managers beforehand he could never learn to protect or assert himself. He would be utterly confused and afterward at a loss about what had been decided on or what he had consented to. Barrett, whose standards of production were as high as his own used to be, offered to relieve him of all this. Booth a agreed tentatively to an arrangement with Barrett still year off. Before Edwina's marriage he had been hoping that he could soon slow down and act less each season, taking "huge lumps 7 of loaf between engagements, until in a few years he could blessedly retire. But with his daughter's leaving home the scheme of his life changed. He supposed now that his future

Now

would be spent in work as long as his harness lasted "I give no thought to it." On October 22 his mother died of pneumonia at three in the morning. Booth reached New York four hours later, and it came over him that this was not the first time he had arrived
too late. Turning back the sheet, he stared down at her face, become young again and blissful, with a sort of envy. "To such

a weary sufferer," he wrote to Barrett, to

whom he had grown

much closer in the last weeks, "the end was a blessing, and to rather than deall who love her a sense of relief has buoyed
pressed us.'* His chief care
share in
all

was for the

spinster Rosalie,

who had had her

the Booth troubles, none of the Booth triumphs. After John's death she and Joe had been their mother's favorites
so Asia thought with a touch of bitterness. But Rosalie was of no use now to anyone. Booth heard her sigh just audibly and murmur: "I wish I was gone too."

"Poor, poor soul! I must now arrange something for her," and he asked kind Mrs. Anderson to keep an eye on Rose. "See her when you can conveniently, but do not treat her as a child that's what she has chafed under all her life."

GRAY HAIR

319

They buried Mrs. Booth beside her husband in Greenmount Cemetery. The family hurried away before the grave was covered over to avoid the crowd that lurked curiously outside,
avid for a glimpse of any activity, any turning of the earth in the lot where John Wilkes' crumbling body lay.
Ill

Edwin Booth's Boston neighbors showed friendly interest, not curiosity, in his comings and goings. Charles Copeland, watching him draw near down Park Street, felt a throb of hero worship. Dr. Bartol, his neighbor on Chestnut Street, used to see him walking home from rehearsal. One day a shelf of snow slid off one of the steep Beacon Hill roofs onto the actor's head and shoulders. Booth didn't even raise his hand to brush it off but marched along powdered all over, "steady as an engine on the track," writes Bartol. "He seemed to find a stage in the street and in the world, and never to have left the tragic play
behind." Bartol knew Booth slightly. "I've led a useless life," the actor said to the clergyman once, and waved away Bartol's amazed
protest.

twin sons, and a setter dog, saw more of Booth now than he had in years. On his way home one night he noticed a light burning in the study at 29 Chestnut Street and tapped on the window. At the second tap the front door flew open and out plunged a cocked revolver. His hair was on end; his Booth,

Tom Aldrich, living on Mount Vernon Street with his wife,

gripping said Aldrich coolly. "Goeyes were distracted. "Hello, Ned," I'll lend you Trip." ing hunting? on a new sort Booth was at Sitting by his study lamp, of thing for him. Laurence Hutton with Brander Matthews was collection of short biographies of British and bringing out a American actors and actresses. Booth had been asked to write

wo$

about his father. Trying was to do Edmund Kean, but at the last minute he begged off and Booth undertook Kean, his father's "Treat arch rival. Lawrence Barrett was already doing Booth. dreaded the drudgery of comBooth begged. He me
gently,"

320
time
all

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
it

position himself, put

left,

off

then sat

down

and off until there was almost no without premeditation and worked

night.

Hutton and Matthews were amused, delighted. Booth's pocket biographies gave almost no biographical facts. Booth
simply set down his crowding, vivid impressions of his father and Kean, with very few dates and no punctuation to speak of. But in imagination, taste, and flair his writing was on a different level from the rest sent in. He wrote as he acted, by inspiration. And he had his own sources of knowledge, outside the
libraries.

He was too young to have met Kean. His essay on this wonderful actor had been inspired by the few stories his father had told him and by his contemplation of Kean's death mask on his
he sat for nights on end smoking until dawn, with the mighty dead, alternately poring over the communing memoirs of actors and looking up sympathetically into their portraits and masks hung all about him: at Thomas Betterton's face, at "the beautiful features of Garrick" in their marvelous mobility. "Old Macklin and George Frederick Cooke gaze at From them I turn to the me with hard immobile features. . and then to his sister Siddons, noble front of Kemble,
study wall
as
.

. . . the feline loveliness of Rachel. ... In the uncanny cast of the head of the dead Kean, which hangs above his portrait opposite my desk, I discover the comic as well as the tragic . wasted . element . . . the distorted face by disease and suffering ... his dead weird beauty." This autumn of 1 885 Booth left Boston for the road as usual. Now even the grandchildren of men and women who had seen the young Booth were being brought, as part of their educaall tion, to catch the last output of the great actor's powers of them remembered were his bright, dark eyes. many Booth was looking forward to his own first grandchild, lookforward with dread because Edwina, her confinement iming minent, was down with a dangerous gastric illness. She and her husband were in Boston, and Booth, absolutely racked with
.

anxiety,

was detained in

New York by the endless indecisions

GRAY HAIR

321

and procrastinations of Mrs. Anderson, who was unable to decide what sort of gravestone she wanted for dear Davy, for which Booth had promised to pay. He couldn't bring himself to abandon the fussy, forlorn old lady to wrestle alone with her gloomy problem, though almost daily wires from his son-inlaw, giving the latest bulletins on Edwina's condition, increased
his

worry.

the time he reached Boston his daughter's life was delittle spaired of. girl was born. The mother's life hung by a thread. Booth was hammering out his essay on Kean, writing until daybreak. Every day or evening Aldrich, "dear old Tom," stopped in to chat with him, "as he did once before

By

years ago when what I then thought the greatest calamity that could befall me, kept me housed for many weeks." Edwina pulled slowly out of danger. And Booth wrote in strange condolence to William Winter, whose son had just

many

died: "As I sat by what I believed would be Edwina's deathbed, the thought of her dear mother was always present, and I thanked God for her early death, which spared ner the sufferings she would have endured, in the misfortunes that so fre-

quently have befallen me. "I cannot grieve at death.

It seems to

me the greatest boon the

Consequently I cannot appreciate the grief of those who mourn the loss of loved ones, particularly if they go early from this hell of misery to which we have been

Almighty has granted

us.

doomed.

"Why
miserable

do not you," he demanded of Winter, "look

little life,
'tis

at this

very worst,

ups and downs, as I do? At the but a scratch, a temporary ill, to be soon cured

with

all its

by that dear old doctor, Death who gives us a life more healthful and enduring than all the physicians, temporal or spiritual,
can give/'
In

New York again in April,

Salvini in

1886,

he costarred splendidly

with Tommaso

at the special performances of Music. Salvini played the Ghost to his Hamlet and Academy was King Lear to his Edgar. Their greatest joint triumph

some

322

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Othello, with Salvini as the Moor, his son Alessandro as Cassio (the two Italians played in their native language), and Booth as lago. Copelana saw the Othello when they brought it to

Boston in May: "It shines now in my memory as the greatest acting I have ever seen." The poet Coleridge had said of Kean's acting that it was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning, for Kean's brilliant spurts were pieced out with dull, dark intervals. But "when Salvini played Othello and Booth lago," writes Copeland, "there were no flashes because there were no periods of dark-

was like reading Shakespeare by a mighty fire that rose and fell with the passion of the scene." Ever since he was in England last, Booth had been bothered with dizziness and an increasing tendency to stumble and fall. The great fear was of course that this would happen onstage, and his doctor vainly warned him not to smoke so much. Acting with Barrett recently, he had reeled, almost fallen, then staggered several yards, which was enough to start the fantastic story, spawned by the Boston Home Journal, that Barrett, resentful of Booth's ability, was pandering to his "inherited weakness" and had slipped "some potion into his claret" as they
ness. It

dined together before the play. "The cause," said the Journal, "is a jealous ambition on the part of this modern lago, to whom

Booth

enacting Cassio by being made drunk, Roderigo by putting money in his purse, and Othello by being utterly undone."
is

Worse was to come.

fallen flat onstage.

opening with Salvini in

of Othello's first raging
Villain,

He was

On April 28, two nights after Booth's New York, he had most unluckily
acting lago and
it

was in the scene

be sure thou prove

it.

Be sure of

my

love a whore,

Salvini's business was to hurl lago to the floor, pretend to trample on him, then jerk him up. Yanked onto his legs, Booth f ' * ' took a couple of unsteady steps and dror- J ' crashing through the brass guard rail of the footlights and put'

GRAY HAIR

323

of the gas jets. He would have ting out three plunged into the orchestra if some of the musicians hadn't shoved him back.

He lay with his head hanging down limp toward the audience
until Salvini rushed

forward and almost

fire.

lifted

him to

his feet

before his clothes caught

There was an awful silence. Then commenced the soft, contemptuous hisses and one or two groans and a rustle of taffeta
as ladies

here and there rose and swished out.

A wooden-faced

attendant appeared from the wing and relit the gas jets. The on and for the next few scenes Booth seemed to be play went himself again. But in the last act, during Othello's death, he a his head lolling to one began to mumble and sank into chair, his legs stuck out. A crowd of supers gathered mercifully side, around him. He was not drunk, as the papers insisted. He had
felt

another touch, a feathery brush, of a vertigo that portended

things.

worse

He was 31, he pleaded. He had rehearsed half the afternoon,

had been gone home exhausted and smoked himself dizzy,
his

told

doctor not to act that night, but had had himself driven by to the theater and during the performance had lain down every
in vain. morning offstage. He pleaded the headline was HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF! "Never was Edwin Booth seen to worse advantage," grieved a Brooklyn paper. "An idol was shattered. . . . When the audience left the

moment he was

Next

Academy

it

had Edwin
it

Booth's secret, and denials will no

longer keep

hidden."

The New York World interviewed an eyewitness "well known in Wall Street and in social circles." This gentleman, who had occupied one of the front boxes, bragged that he
"could
tell at

was something wrong with Booth. and stood for a moment leering at He stage the actors ... his head wabbled from side to side like a sick when he began to talk in a husky voice, mumbling baby's. And his lines, I knew he was drunk."
a glance there

marched on the

for friends like Bispham to print letters proBooth had almost never accepted testing that for twenty years more than a glass of beer and never a drop before acting. The
It

did

no good

324

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

drunk to brace himself for public preferred to think he had got the ordeal of acting with Salvini because Salvini "hogged the sneered one of the papers, "so stage." "He is rich and lazy,"
rich that he cares for
rehearse."

no more money,

so lazy that he won't

was one of those who defended his friend publicly and Booth wrote to thank him: "Have suffered intensely since
Barrett

my 'accident.' Bless you for your generous defence." He begged Edwina, whose happiness in her baby
dimmed by
der
is

was

the scandal, not to mind what she read: "The slanon the wing, and I must live it down, as I have done

before." And to
I

Hutton on May 4: "My misery is not yet ended every day some ugly reference to my misfortune appears and

am

heartsick."

In Boston he tripped and pitched headlong again, but, merciHe bitterly regretted that his fully, he was behind the scenes. on Kean and his father, which were ready for the press, essays

were not to be published until fall. "Their appearance just now for in each of them I refer to the brutal would help my cause, censure or sick actors, or whenever an accident befalls them, while other brain-workers are excused on the ground of overwork and nervous prostration." Of his father Booth had written: "Although his eccentricities were invariably attributed to the effect of alcohol, the charge His vagaries were due solely to his was mainly false.
.

often has the desire to peculiarly sensitive temperament. own will, when, mentally or hide myself almost mastered physically unfit, duty has compelled me to entertain an

How

my

audience."

IV
Booth spent the last week of August, 1886, at Boothden with the Grossmanns, a devoted couple, and their baby. He was in a "down" mood; it was not, could not be, like the days he and Edwina used to pass alone. He was not happy there. He hurried
away.

GRAY HAIR
Meanwhile, Barrett in
first

325

of his new partner's tours under his management. Barrett was not free to go along himself, not until next year. But he drew aside one of the young actresses he had picked for the company and urged her while on the road to set the pace for the others by "being herself" with Air. Booth, by not being afraid of him, for on his "contented mind," said Barrett, "my own business future depends."

New York was actively lining up the

Kitty Molony's first chance came a week later in Bay Gty, handful of the actors were Michigan. eating supper in the hotel after the play and glanced up to see Booth walk past the dining-room door alone, walking slowly and bowing gravely in table. In that at their polite smile and those grave eyes was gay an expression could it be of loneliness? Was it Edwin

Booth was lonely? Ignoring the

star breaking

bread with

possible etiquette that frowned on a his support, Kitty sent Arthur Chase,

after Booth to ask: Would he them? They held their breaths, and then the greatest star join of them all, looking shy but grateful, entered the dining room, piloted by Chase, and sat down at the company table to eat his plain supper. "I thank you all," he murmured when he had

the

company manager, running

finished.

At her first introduction to him timid on her side, reserved and dignified on his at rehearsal in New York, Kitty had seen in Mr. Booth's face "that something," she writes, "that makes a face immortal, and its painter immortal." This closer glimpse of him as a human being was altogether too much for her. It was in the air to be "insane on" Booth.

Emma

Vaders, the company's leading lady, an intense little third creature crammed with talent, was the next to fall. Ida Rock, buried her face in Kilty's lap and moaned: "He's girl, so sweet." Arthur Chase threw up has hands. He "pitied" Mr.

Booth.

was in the air. When they pkyed in Kalamazoo at the end of September, and Booth lay resting in his hotel room before
It

the show, his door opened abruptly and a gaunt giantess of a woman marched in and over to the bed. She stared down at

326
him.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
He
fascinated into her hard face. He couldn't all over. Gloomily the woman bent and kissed him on the mouth. Her mission accomplished, out again. In a freezing sweat Booth leaped up
stared

up

speak; he was trembling

down

she tramped after her and locked the door. Never in his life had he been so terrified. one of the girls in the "Perhaps she was an old maid/' piped to whom he was telling the story. No, he said, he

company

had seen her wedding ring.

Barrett, having chosen this company with great care, wrote to learn Booth's opinion of it. Booth hedged: "You put me

in a delicate position." The truth was he liked them all personally but, with the exception of Miss Vaders, "not as actors. . . The leading young men seem to lack 'character' and
.

force.

Royle, Harte, amount to nix."

Edwin Milton Royle (Tubal, Guildenstern) was the future author of the play The Squaw Man and the father of Selena Royle, the actress. Then there were John T. Malone (Claudius,
Banquo) "and other poor sticks who smile and whine in tawI am dry fakements through their dreary scenes. sorry for all of 'em for they are all so attentive and earnest." This was today's generation. Yesterday's was headed by
.

Charlie Barron, the virile but decayed player of second parts to the star, "who has really," said Booth, "acted Othello excellently; he belches here and there somewhat harshly, but not
often," and dear old Mrs. ("Mama") Baker, the character woman, who "as Regan looks antique enough to spank old Lear; the Fool's line about making 'thy daughters mothers,'

thy

is

not, in her case, at all inappropriate."

ing with plans away in New York, not only decided to extend the route west as far as California, which meant Booth would

Business on this tour was already so good that Barrett,

sprout-

be trekking until spring, he was

also arranging a second, much tour for next season when he could longer go too. Even the remote prospect made Booth groan. " 'Thou torturest me, Tubal! dear boy, I have barely set my foot upon the road when you appal me (one or two

My

p's?)

by your

GRAY HAIR

327

proposition to prolong the agony another weary year! ... I have that unhappy disposition to agonize over coming events, and even now I am weary of the possible next season's labor! Not the labor of acting but of travel and digesting the wretched stuff one is compelled to gorge in these handsome hotels .

... oh! to begin, before I've had a chance can possibly endure the present, to arrange a future agony quite demoralizes me." The chef at the Palmer House in Chicago, who was from Delmonico's, almost wept because Booth ate so little. And "Ah, Misser Boo," cried the Swiss waiter, "Madame Modjeska is like you. She do not eat, but she smoke all time

my belly revolts
to ascertain
if I

perfect despair flooded his face and he wailed: "Something will me to the theater to you! it is to me!" happen!

four weeks. In her New York dressing room Kitty Molony broke her hand mirror and half as a joke let Booth know about it. She hadn't dreamed that her idol, "so balanced, so calm," could be superstitious, but to her astonishment a look of

They played in St. Louis,

Cleveland, then in

New York for

cigarettes."

To

No

Next morning he was flat on his back with what he

was still in bed on November 13, his fifty-third birthday, and he scribbled a line to Millie, his grandchild, who had begun to creep about. His head ached, he told her, and his fifty-three eyes were quite dim. "You and I eat just the same kind of food plain milk mostly, only you take it from a bottle, which I've given up; it's a bad habit." Propped up in bed he read the papers through his sliding
"Joe Howard today says I am a faded wraith of Hamlet. Joe loveth not Ned." Joe hated Ned, whatever his reasons, and did his utmost to demolish him: "Rich, abundantly able to make illustrious the he does not adorn, and so meagrely equipped in all profession intellectual garnishings as to make it an absolute mental impossibility for him to discuss with any man of culture even the whys and wherefores of the things he does upon the stage.
ing at his age.
pince-nez.

He

edly called "belly trouble" and the theater stood dark ten days.

dispirit-

A writer named Howard published an article snip-

328
.
.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
What
is

Booth's reputation today? That of a

for

man

con-

money and money alone." To their surprise and joy Booth's actors found their salaries out of his own pocket, and he wrote to paid during his illness to Barrett the high rate of interest Barrett was curprotest loan. "It is unfair and piggish rently paying him on a personal it" His bank accounts, he admitted cheerfully, were to accept 1 am ill at these "fearfully muddled. Damn figgers, anyhow. numbers!"' Back at the theater he spoke seriously to Kitty about the broken mirror. "You must not mind, now. It might have been my daughter. It might have been fatal." Something prompted the young girl to answer firmly: "You will not be ill again this season, Mr. Booth." And instantly
tent to

work

Booth's face cleared.

In Boston the huge Boston Theater, which many stars had trouble filling, was so packed for a performance of Booth's faded wraith that the orchestra had to be moved up onto the

He stayed with the Grossmanns, who were at 29 Chestnut Street. Edwina, expecting a second baby, was not feeling well, and Booth's head still acned. "Tho' the papers praise me," he admitted in a note to Barrett, "I have done some pretty bad work notably with Lear, last night, whose wits were really " wild with a hellish 'pain upon my forehead here.' The younger members of the company, not yet hardened
apron.
to the
life

that dragged

of the road, pitied Booth for the relentless timetable him away from his family five days before Christ-

mas*
it

signed

to act in Washington." He had declined an official invitation by President Chester Arthur. "This may be mere senti-

They played in Syracuse on Christmas Day, after which was one-night stands to Philadelphia, where they stayed two weeks, then struck out south and west. On January 17 they were in Baltimore. The bustling Barrett had been sure he could persuade Booth to act in the Capitol, but the easygoing Booth had taken his stand. "Nothing could induce me

GRAY HAIR
ment
cord
'tis a strong one and will hold till broken.' I cannot, will not go there." Already the travel, which was simply a lark to the

329

in me, but

my

'silver

is

girls and and raced one another on sang round-songs the station platforms for exercise, was wearing on Booth as it had never done before, especially at night when the noise and motion kept him awake. To Barrett from Memphis he wailed

young men who

that "the trip here

...

thought

was to me a fearful one! not a wink of sleep. would go mad &, seriously, I believe such

would soon if oft repeated put me in an asylum experience or in a box; then to act with nerves prostrated, a raging headache and 'sick to me stummic'! Great gordP

On his own initiative he had decided to drop three scheduled Richard ///, Brutus, and Don Caesar de Bazan. He had plays:
tried Richard, in St. Louis,
dear, warmhearted Kitty acted one of the little princes, a part not suited to her. Even had before the tour started, Booth had led her aside during rehearsal " made it and with a melting, 'Would it break your heart if dear he was withdrawing her from Osric in Hamlet. When it

where

turned out she had been promised Lazarillo, another boy's part, in Don Caesar and the small but difficult role of Lucretia, victim of Tarquin's lust, in Brutzts, and had had expensive costumes made, Booth explained to Barrett that cost what it might he must finish this tour without these vehicles. He couldn't bear to hurt Kitty's feelings. "She could not possibly do Lucretia or Lazarillo. ... In my paternal weakness I concluded to omit the plays rather than break her aspiring heart by casting others
for them."

In return for their thoughtfulness on that lonely night in Bay City, he invited Kitty, Emma Vaders, and Ida Rock to be his guests at meals in his private car, the David Garrick. Mama
Baker, Mrs. Foster, the heavy woman, and Arthur Chase were asked too. Chase held the hat while the ladies drew lots every The longest slip meant the seat at Booth's right. for

day

places.

very conscious of the lago scandal, they stealthily took note that not a drop of alcohol was served at his table, nothing
Still

330
except

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

milk and bottled water. They were fiercely, protectively turned to the London Lyceum, how partisan. Once the talk H. L. Bateman had got ahead of Booth in signing the lease of it, "and," interposed Mama Baker in her chesty tones, "he engaged an unknown provincial actor whose name was Henry

Irving"

Then Mrs. Foster, eloquently: "Had you taken the Lyceum, Mr. Booth, there WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A HENRY IRVING! " "I dare say," Booth quietly acknowledged, "Irving would have had a harder, a longer, climb of it. ... He might perhaps have taken a thornier path, but it would have led him where he is today, of course." Another time Kitty put her foot in it, asking unthinkingly: "How many brothers and sisters did you have, Mr. Booth?"
she spoke she could have bitten her tongue Booth only said stolidly: "I'll name them you count them for me! Junius Brutus after my father, of course
out.

The minute

Rosalie,

Henry, Mary, Frederick, Elizabeth

come

in here

Asia, Joe

how many is that?"

"Nine, Mr. Booth." But he had left out one name.

They played in New Orleans. Booth's dressing-room window looked into a brothel next door. The faded Hamlet caught
flashes of brunette

far west they

good looks, heard the scrape of fiddles. Then went into Texas, finally into California in March,

his room at San Francisco's Palace Hotel with camellias of red, white, and jammed pink. Maidenhair ferns were pinned up and down the lace curtains, and a pillow of camellias said "Booth" and "Welcome" in purple violets. Two black-bordered cards showed all this was from the mother and sister of a young actor, Samuel Piercy, who had been Booth's leading man in Boston a few seasons earlier during a smallpox scare. Booth and Edwina had been inoculated but and died. Booth had been kind to him,

1887.

Booth found

The San Francisco engagement promised brilliantly, but for

GRAY HAIR

331

Kitty and Arthur Chase there was a shadow over it, a gray shadow. Even friendly critics had begun to go for Booth's hair in Hamlet. The box office at the Baldwin Theater

gray

was sold out. Expectation was on tiptoe. After Barrett in a whole string of letters had advanced every reason except the real one why his star ought to wear a wig in Hamlet for the word to Chase to do what he could. Chase opening, he sent to do what she could Booth's "paternal weakbegged Kitty ness" for her had not been overlooked.

Makmg several false starts

"Only a few."
like

and with palpitating delicacy she

got the idea across. Booth demanded: I entertain?" please those

"You

think a wig

may

It's diabolical, a wig for Hamlet! If they don't Hamlet let them stay away!" my His voice was grim, amused, a little sad. He wore the wig.

"Hamlet!

San Francisco hadn't forgotten her dark-haired favorite. His reception on opening night held up the play for five stunning minutes. But Booth was not well, was feeling dizzy again, and lonely too, he wrote to Barrett from his hotel room. "Have had a lonely sort of feeling, off and on, all the time I've been here;
I am still very anxious about Edwina perhaps I'm tired. ... she must, surely, have gone past her time." He included in this engagement a single performance of Othello in which he played the Moor. To be taken in Mr. Booth's arms and kissed by him in the love scenes was heaven to Emma Vaders as Desdemona, "and of course he knew it," exclaimed Kitty, yearning from a box.

with Booth deepened.

full

He had appeared one day with his arms of rolled-up socks that needed darning, and he gazed bashfully at the pining Kitty, Emma, and Ida. Could they, would they? Kitty jumped for the socks and divided her spoils. As the tour neared its end, the high and exquisite romance of it made

They started east again, acting as they went. In the privacy of the David Garrick, as it sped past the breath-taking scenery of Wyoming and Colorado, the company's domestic intimacy

33*

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

the three young actresses count the days left and ache over the weeks gone. None of the three had been re-engaged for next
fall.

Their last night of all was in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where they gave Richelieu to one of those mysteriously cold and sodden houses that the most successful tours occasionally stumble on. It was a disappointing windup and Booth was
piqued.

At Richelieu's

line

about "dull

tiers

of

lifeless

When the Curse of Rome, his tour de force, got hardly a ripple
of the applause he was used to, he performance in a caricature of
let

offstage at Royle who had just made his exit as then stalked down to the front and willfully turning Huguet, his back on the house began to make horrible faces at the others.

gapers"

he winked

himself go and finished the

funny

that the helpless cast

was

his usual acting so savagely in torture not to laugh. Chase

allowed afterward he hadn't realized Mr. Booth "could be so full of the Old Nick." But he would never have done it if the play had been Shakespeare, said Booth almost fiercely. Somehow for him as well as for the three girls this ending of a tour meant more than usual because these eight months had been "not the happiest point of my life" he told them wistfully, "another time was that, but it was the happiest season of my career." Everything, he mused, had hinged on that first evening when stage etiquette had been breached. "Had I been so foolish as not to accept your invitation to your first supper, this season would have been like all of them.'' The girls and Chase stood around him in the echoing railway station as they had often done before, but this time to say

good-by.
faintly.

They clung

mounted the

step of the

to his hand. Kitty burst into tears. He moving train and waved back, smiling

CHAPTER

15

The Vulture Hours

Creeps in

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, this petty pace from day to day. Macbeth, Act V, scene f

in your charming little home." And to Barrett: "I never again attempt to 'set up my everlasting rest' outside of Mount Auburn, where I had my house prepared some 24 years ago; a cool, brick apartment that just fits my carcase." It made him blue as indigo to walk through 29 Chestnut Street and see the stripped rooms, once so cozy. Had he allowed it to, his simmering depression could have swelled into a wild and bitter grief. But that way madness lay. "Let me shun that," he wrote. Julia, his housekeeper, looked on while he packed his books. Her bkck face hung in gloomy folds. "Yes, Julia," he said, "this

EDWTNTA'S second child was a boy, born on April 9, 1887. She and her husband had taken a house of their own on Beacon Street in Boston. Booth planned to sell the Chestnut Street house, which had got too large, then go back to New York to live by himself in an apartment. He would be traveling a great deal. "I hope, dear," he wrote to Edwina, "that you will enjoy many, many

happy years
shall

333

334
is

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
make a home and failed, but still home always ready for me at Mount Auburn."

the third time I've tried to

there's a little

Most of this July he spent cruising up the coast into bracing Maine waters on the Oneida, a yacht belonging to his friend E. C. Benedict. Barrett was on board, so were those other good
fellows Aldrich, Hutton, and Bispham. Booth's depression fifted a little as he broached a plan to them. It was a cherished plan,

New York a really first-class club, which would be chiefly for

and this was very important also open to some eminent men in other lines: a social gathering place where all could get acquainted, where the insularity of "the profession" could be rubbed off and the nonprofessionals come to know actors as artists and gentlemen. For he could never be quite unactors but
rett's

vaguely conceived as in

memory

of his father, to found in

conscious of the special quality of his own acceptance (Bartoo) on equal terms oy the very men he was talking with

When they steamed into Chicago in October they found Richard Mansfield creating a sensation there in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Already faint signs pointed to the thirty-three-yearold Mansfield as the coming tragedian. If a future leader in the could be said to be emerging, it was Mansfield. Booth had no chance to see the play, but he took time to write his congratulations to the rising actor on his dual performance, "of which I have heard such glowing accounts." This year the name of the stars' railway car was the Junius Brutus Booth. Booth and Barrett occupied it together.
field

and others like them, educated men. The club he proposed would be "a beacon to incite emulation in the 'poor to player' lift himself to a higher social grade than the Bohemian level." up "Call it The Players'!" Aldnch put in enthusiastically. Definite plans for it had to be while Booth and postponed Barrett set off in September on their first tour together. Barrett had daringly insisted on doubling their prices, arguing that when the public saw them both it saw twice as much as usual and would willingly pay twice as much. Booth had been doubtful "it would be a great risk and very unpleasant to come down." But Barrett had been right, of course.

They

THE VULTURE HOURS

looked a modern Brutus and Cassius to the

335

life (the "noble Brutus," the "lean and hungry" Cassius) as they went for their walk every afternoon, sedately pacing the station platform in fur-collared overcoats.

drudgery booking, hiring, rehearsing, and keeping the machinery of the tour running smoothly. "Barrett is in the seventh heaven," Booth told Edwina. "He works like a horse." On his side, Booth luxuriated in being taken care of. All he had to do was act, then hold out his hand for his share of the He was spared all decisions, and he sank comfortably profits. into the habit of saying to his partner: "Tell me what you want me to do and 1*11 do it." For the first time in years he had good support. However, critics must criticize and now they complained that the partners'
repertoire was tiresomely limited. "Impossible not to recall here Henry Irving's splendid energy in preparing a new bill for us

place, giving himself second billing, secondary roles, the second-best dressing room. In their joint curtain calls he sometimes flung his arm lovingly around lus partner's neck as he led him offstage and when he spoke the name "Edwin" his voice had a dramatic, solemn tone as though to convey the uniqueness of their relationship. He did every bit of the of

reporters' first question was always: "How do Mr. and Mr. Barrett get along?" It seemed as if the alliance Booth had brought out the best qualities in both men. At forty-nine Barrett had at last accepted the fact of Booth's superior gift. His ambition now was to be the second greatest American actor, and he slipped ungrudgingly into second

The

every night," grumbled the New York Press. "A clock-beating art is held out to us. Mr. Booth as lago, Mr. Barrett as Othello.

Mr. Barrett as lago. Tick, tick, tick." were heard from other stars, who had a of yells rage hard time competing with Booth and Barrett when the two
as Othello,

Mr. Booth

And

appeared separately and who were utterly destroyed when they played together. Any theater honored by a visit from "the combine" could count on standing room only, while the other houses in town stood three-quarters empty. Booth and Barrett

336

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

element in every comappealed to the conservative, well-to-do which could safely bring its young daughters and give munity, the girls the satin programs for their memory books. The double charged actually seemed to draw rather than repel audiprices ences, as Barrett had shrewdly guessed they would!. People saved for weeks to see the famous team, and those luckless

smaller stars

who

played a city just before or after Booth and

Barrett almost lost their shirts.

When the first Booth-Barrett tour was over in the spring of

1888, an actor

named Milton Nobles fumed

New York Dramatic Mirror that it had "swooped down upon

the profession at large after the manner of a cyclone or a stroke of paralysis. Throughout the country particularly, the oneand two-night stands they simply killed the business for six or eight weeks in the midst of the season." They nearly killed themselves. This was a much more strenuous tour than last season's, with Barrett often scheduling two shows a day, "like a traveling vaudeville," said Edwin Royle,

furiously in the

who was
back

in the company again. Very often his best, stinting the one-night stands,

now Booth

held
his

husbanding

powers for the large cities. Topeka or Elmira, whose unspoiled citizens flocked open-mouthed along the railway tracks when
the Booth-Barrett special pulled
in, definitely

cud not see the

same quality of acting by JBooth as Chicago or Pittsburgh. But they got their money's worth from the other partner, for Barrett never stinted onstage. "Mr. Booth can act when he wants
to," observed the critic
his left

Nym

Crinkle,

who took away with

"and Mr. Bar-

rett

hand the praise he gave with always wants to."

his right,

n
Booth's club for actors was taking bodily form, fourteen bodily forms: On January 7, 1888, The Players was incorhimself and thirteen others, each a notable man in they included Barrett, Jefferson, John Drew, Augustin Daly, and among the nontheatricals Bispham, Mark Twain, and General William Tecumseh Sherman.

porated

by

his line:

THE VULTURE HOURS

The
let

337

Booth-Barrett caravan was on the road when Bispham Booth know he had been elected president. Booth was flattered, yet he could wish a man had been chosen "of a more nature ... I shall make a sorry figure-head, a mere positive dummy, in the chair." The vice-president was Augustin Daly. Hutton and Bispham each had positions, and ever vigilant to protect his partner's pride, Booth reminded Bispham: "I do hope that Barrett was not forgotten, but that he was made a
director as well as yourself." Part of his dream was to buy a fine building, stuff it with furniture, and present it to The Players as his gift for their had commissioned Bispham to look around for clubhouse.

He

a place, having in mind some spacious old brownstone for about $80,000, but when Bispham reported finding just such a house in an exclusive neighborhood for $150,000 Booth wired him

to accept.
Briefly in New York again on May 21, Booth and Barrett took part in a benefit for Lester Wallack, the representative in his generation of one of the great theatrical families of the country. Lester Wallack and his father, James William Wallack, called "the elder Wallack" (whom the elder Booth had flown at with a knife), had given their name to a succession of New York playhouses. The younger Wallack had been a butterfly of an actor, a specialist in elegantly comic and jauntily romantic costume parts, Doricourt in She Stoops, Puff in The Critic, Mercutio, Don Caesar de Bazan, Claude Melnotte. Now he was sixty-eight, jaunty, arthritic, elegant, and destitute. benefit at New York's Metropolitan Opera House had been organized to relieve the old actor's poverty. Hamlet was chosen and Booth invited to do the Prince. It was an all-star cast, with

Frank

Mayo as the King, John Gilbert as Polonius, Joseph Jefferson and William Florence as the Gravediggers. The Ophelia was Helena Modjeska; the Queen, Gertrude Kellogg; the
Player Queen, Rose Coghlan. Stars who shone in their own right like E. L. Davenport, Minnie Maddern, Ferdinand Gottschalk, and May Robson had traveled half across the country to be supers and '^walking ladies and gentlemen" for this per-

338

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

formance. Many bought new costumes to be worn this one as souvenirs. night, then laid away dressed quickly and flocked into the greenroom.

Everyone

Only Jefferson loitered in

his street clothes,

he didn't come on

until the last act. The white-coated grips delighted in banging their flats into chattering groups to show these stars they else. The volunteer orthem no better than

thought

chestra began to tune up;

it

Walter Damrosch.

the play started the illustrious sucareless of appearances, strayed all over the stage chasing pers, the limelight. The audience interestedly picked them out. Both anxious not to miss wings were so cluttered with performers had to fight their way to the enthat the

When

anybody was led by twenty-six-j^ear-old

anything

principals

trances.

Booth's black figure was the one seen most often worming like a swimmer's. He had through the crowd, arms thrusting taken no pains this time to hide his age. His Hamlet, grayhaired

and lined, looked much

after

older than

Frank Mayo's King.

age was forgotten.

Ten minutes

he opened

his

mouth

his

"Mr. Booth never acted so brilliantly," applauded the Herald, "never with so much fire and feeling. ... He dominated the
stage,

not alone by his genius, but by the courtesy of those around him. He was, as never before in his career, the star of
If he hadn't been pledged to act in this benefit he would have begged off. Five days earlier his sister Ask had died in

stars."

England of heart
her
last,

disease at fifty-two. Since

Booth had seen

Clarke,

her adored first-born son

Edwin Booth

who

trained at Annapolis, had been lost at sea. Because there was no witness to his death, the mother had hoped on. She found

some help for her trials in religion, yet the gloom and confusion of several of her recent letters had made Booth, after
reading one of them, sigh to Hutton, who knew her well: "Poor girl! I fear she's 'off her head' seriously." Her husband brought her body home. She was buried at Greenmount with

a Catholic service.

THE VULTURE HOURS

book

339

Just before her death she had secretly entrusted a small black to Benjamin Farjeon, the English husband of Maggie

Jefferson, being fearful that if it fell into John Clarke's hands and he would tear it to pieces. The book had a lock and

key on the cover the stamped initials J.W.B. Asia had set down in it all she could remember of her younger brother touching,

human
if it

came,

glimpses to be given to the public when the time ever did, for others to look with clear eyes at

Johnny.

Down

in Baltimore for Asia's funeral,

Booth

called

on

his

old schoolmistress, Susan Hyde, and found her mortally ill, then two weeks later he learned she had died. "My dear old
. . . She was 'woman all through; in the true of that word: gentle in manner, soft in heart and low in sense her estimation of her worth: excellent things in woman!" He was writing to Barrett from the Hotel Vendome in Boston.

school-marm.

"Bye-the-bye, how do your glands? Think of Bassanio and keep 'em down; no old fogy next season, mind you!" For Barrett had broken out with peculiar swellings of the face, which made him look mumpish, and had had to leave the company before work was over to undergo treatment.

"All but I are taking their ease for the summer," Booth told Winter a few weeks later when the tour had ended. "I am homeless and hang up at hotels here and there." Jefferson wanted him for a visit at Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod. Wherever Jefferson was there would be "bushels of children and grandchildren, all so congenial and jolly." Booth always felt well at the Jeffersons' and stayed as long as he decently could; a
visit

to Joe

"lifts

me high up ...
circle."

has delicious

company
all.

his

On one of these visits Jefferson read Dickens aloud to them

charming family

Booth had heard Dickens in person give one of his famous public readings from his own works and thought he was terrible, but Jefferson read with exquisite funniness the Crummies episode from Nicholas Nickleby:

34<>

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
"The

wife is in the in the theatrical profession myself, theatrical children are in the theatrical profesprofession, sion. I had a that lived and died in it."
"I

am

theatrical profession!" said

Mr. Vincent Crummies.

my

my

dog

It was not so jolly at the hotel in Narragansett Pier where Booth spent part of July to be near Edwina and his own grandchildren. He seldom went to Boothden any more. The Grossmanns didn't care to live there, and the pretty estate was often deserted except for the staff. Now and then while he was at Narragansett he took the steamer across the Bay and drove out to inspect his property, staying only a few hours. Barrett's lumps were still with him; they worried the doctors. However, treatment at Sulphur Springs had made them softer and he was able to set off on the old round with Booth in the

middle of September. As before, they raked in the dollars, paid out with their strength. "These two actors have made money," said the Kansas City Star, "but they are for the present nearly worn out." Just before they started Lester Wallack died, having had only four months to enjoy the spoils from his benefit. They were in St. Paul when William Warren of the Boston Museum, whose Boston debut Booth had seen with his father in 1846, died on September 2 1 Booth himself verged on fifty-five. And in a flash the milestone came, was passed. They were playing
.

Gifts gamboled in: flowers and and a portrait of Edwina from herself, and silk handkerchiefs from Barrett "I must have had a hundred dozen silk handkerchiefs given me at various times." But in the midst of the celebrating he suffered an irreparable loss. He believed it was at Delmonico's he had dropped a dear little penknife Mollie had given him in the year of Edwina's birth, but the
fruit,

in

New York on his birthday.

waiters searched in vain for

it.

"I never missed anything so

much."

The house Booth had bought for The Players was at 16 Gramercy Park. He was reserving the third floor for himself. It would be his home. There he would live without paying

THE VULTURE HOURS

341

rent, and if he liked, was free to lease the other of the two bedrooms on the floor to Barrett whenever his partner was staying in town "I don't want to be there alone all the while/* The architect Stanford White was doing over the house, and the costs would be about double what Booth originally intended, but he had given the order to go ahead. He was hard at it himself, excitedly plotting where to put furniture and hang pictures, and he selected Shakespearian quotations to

appear in each room. To Hutton: "What think you of this as a motto for the grill Let's 'mouth it, as many of our Players do'? & for the Toilet 'Nature her custom holds, let shame say

what it will'?" Gramercy Park had an iron fence to keep out the public. It was a sacred rectangle with private houses on all four sides, and only the residents had keys to the Park gate. When these good burghers heard that a dub for actors was to open among them, the hair on the back of their necks rose. Later, though,
they learned the quality of the members, they calmed down, their guard, turned cordial to the extent that Booth could shyly boast: "The Players is already popular with the very best sort of folk." Already the club was his darling, his pride. The money he had poured into it and the remarkable collection of theatrical relics and portraits he planned to give, and to which he was devotedly adding, had been accumulated by his own labors, were in a sense part of him, so that Jefferson, second president of The Players, was able to say after Booth's death that "it was not his wealth only, but it was himself that he gave." Membership was small, and a residue of actors not asked to
as

and still on

join aired the opinion that Booth was trying to buy his way into society by founding The Players. "Let's wait and see," sniffed the Dramatic Mirror, "of what mortal sort of use Mr. Booth's club is going to be to the profession. The actors . . . don't

need any gilded halls and hammered brass 'em acquainted or better their condition."
Eve, 1888. Booth stood on a
dais in the

grill

rooms to make

The clubhouse was thrown open at midnight on New Year's

main
hall,

in front of

342

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

the ornate marble fireplace with its carven masks of Comedy and Tragedy, facing all the members. Not he but another Booth seemed to dominate them: Junius Brutus in portrait stared with
the mantel. Booth handed thrusting gaze from the wall over over to Daly as vice-president the deed conveying the house Barrett importantly read aloud a letter from and
furnishings.

Edwina and a poem composed for poet Thomas Parsons. Edwina had

the evening by the Boston sent a laurel wreath with a

.

card inscribed "Hamlet, king, father reached a particular line of the poem

."

and when Barrett

Tragedian, take the crown!

the wreath was passed up to Booth, who tried to respond, got stuck three times, cleared his throat, looked desperately embarrassed, dabbed with his handkerchief at his lips and finally yielded with a faint: "I think I can say no more." As the clock tolled twelve he stooped to the new fireplace
to light the Yule log, also sent by Edwina. Then he held high a loving cup, which had belonged to William Warren, been

The Players. He tipped wine into it from a flagon that had been his father's, drank ritually, and started the cup passing from hand to hand in the flame-lit circle of gentlemen all,
to

bequeathed by Warren to Jefferson and presented by Jefferson

while outside the city bells pealed in the

New Year.

m
the library as though the club had been running a year. To Edwina, Booth couldn't help pluming himself: "Several of the best men of New York are here, and it will, no doubt, be the rendezvous of the choicest."

By noon next day several members had ordered The Players grillroom. Others were reading in deep

lunch in
chairs in

Having gone to bed at five and got up at one, both he and were wan but jubilant. "All believe, as I do, that this will be of more real benefit to the actor than anything ever done
Barrett
in the world."

He

could hardly wait to be in residence.

He

and Barrett

THE VULTURE HOURS

343

moved into their neighboring rooms on the third floor and began going down together to meals in the grill, where the waiter

who served them remembered that "Mr. Booth was gentle and
unassuming, Mr. Barrett decidedly loud and pretentious." Several times he carried their trays upstairs, and the two gentlemen's bedrooms, he noted, were furnished characteristically: Mr. Barrett's with a "showy bed of oxidized silver," while Mr.
Booth's bed was a "simple affair of dull brass." The papers having a great deal to say about the new club, Booth's name naturally appeared in them over and over. Not so Barrett's, but "no matter what the reporters say or omit in their mention of us," Booth quickly forestalled his sensitive "the truth will be known and the truth is that withpartner, out your influence I could never have done so much for the dub. ... I need your back-bone. If you should ever lose "
interest in it I shall 'flop.'

They were away on the road again, were in Baltimore when

Rosalie

Booth slipped out from under the load of her ingrained and hopeless melancholy and died on January 15,1 889, at sixtyfive. Her burial was at Greenmount; there was an Episcopal service. Only two were left out of all the brood old Junius Brutus had fathered by his second wife. Richard, the unwanted first wife's son, had dropped out of sight years before. During
this spring

Joseph in New York finally took his medical degree and was made attending physician at the Northern Dispensary on Christopher Street. He was forty-nine. The incessant travel was a dreadful drain on Booth this season. He felt jounced and harried in spite of the cushions Barof private railway cars with beds rett provided in the shape and sybaritic hotel suites. He couldn't adjust and bathtubs,
himself, couldn't relax
"I am aweary, aweary. . . ." In Rochester on April 3 they were driving to the theater for Othello when he began to feel, not ill exactly, but indescribthe doorman, an old-timer, ably odd. At the stage entrance them and when Booth tried to answer he could not. greeted He could not speak. Still he gave no sign to Barrett, but had

himself dressed as lago and tottered on, hoping for a miracle.

344

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
came. Facing the audience, the best he could force out

None

" was uncouth sounds. "What's the matter with Mr. Booth?

whispered Roderigo desperately into the wing. And the hovering Barrett called: "Go for a doctor!"

was lowered. A doctor from across the street examined Booth and announced he had had a slight stroke. Then Barrett, knocked all of a heap by the verdict and close to tears at the sad appeal in his partner's eyes as Booth lay rushed before speechless on a couch, lost his head completely, die curtain and dismissed the huge audience in a voice filled

The

curtain

with

"We fear," said Barrett, "that this is the beginagony. of the end. The world has probably heard for the last time ning the voice of the greatest actor who speaks the English language."

EDWIN BOOTH DYING! warned the newspapers. The editors had spent a busy night delving in their morgues for summaries of Booth's life. About the time the public read this news, and looking up from it, had begun to speak of the great actor in
the past tense individuals reminding themselves when they had seen him last Booth was already talking and laughing with the relieved and red-eyed Barrett. His seizure had left him almost as swiftly as it had come. The tour was suspended while he went back to New York to be overhauled by a specialist who was less alarming than the doctor in Rochester, used the term "nervous prostration," and advised, first, rest, then a much lighter schedule, urging on Booth what all the doctors had

urged unsuccessfully, to smoke

less.

The

story hinted at in

some of the papers was

that Barrett

had been driving Booth unmercifully, exploiting his partner's genius and pitifully failing strength for his own aggrandizement. Even Edwina, whom the ominous headlines had sent hurrying north from Florida, wondered if Barrett wasn't working her father too hard. "You must not allow yourself to supthat I am pose," Booth corrected her, severely for him, ". a mere tool in the hands of others. I do not consider it very complimentary to have my over-anxious friends blame others
. .

for leading me by the nose."

THE VULTURE HOURS

rett

345

About his health he had no illusions, and sent a line to Barfrom The Players: "I have received my second warning,

and

we

can't tell

when

I'll

get notice to quit." His

first

warn-

ing had been the fit of vertigo while he was acting lago with SalvinL lago, it seemed, was his unlucky role. He implored Barrett to let them both go slower next season, cut out some of the one-night stands and the two shows on Saturday. "Less $, of course, but I believe more life for both of us. ... Darling, we are getting old."
Barrett had apologized for his outburst in front of the curtain, was tormenting himself that he had said too much. "Of
course, my dear boy," Booth comforted him, "you could not avoid letting your very heart out, with all its fears, that dole. God bless you, my dear friend, for your deep fid night. affection for me which is reciprocated fully tho' I don't say much about it."
. .

was back with the tour by the middle of April They played in San Francisco, the third time in three years that Bootn had acted here, and business was not quite so good as usual. He and Barrett put the slackness down to the high prices (though the same prices had been gladly paid a year before) and to its being the end of May, when the best people were already out of town. Between performances they took easy walks in the
park above the ocean, their carriage following. The California scenery was striking as ever, yet somehow it had lost its charm for Booth. San Francisco was the city of his youth. To be here now only made him homesick for his room at The Players. This was a quiet brown room. East Twentieth Street below was noisy and public, but three floors above in his own bedsitting room (my nest among the tree-tops of Gramercy") Booth could be as quiet and private as he pleased, and so he was during this summer after he and Barrett had worked their way east again and brought the fatiguing season to a close. The life of the club was languid through July and August, and the few members that drifted in and out in no way infringed on his seclusion. It was even a little lonely living on the

He

34<$

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

third floor without Barrett, who was off taking treatments for the glandular disease that had its ups and downs but would not

leave him, and on the whole was rather worse. "Dear old Lumpy. . . ." Booth wrote to him.

"Dear old

wrote often and affectionately. "I have missed you very much altho' you won't believe it. I've not had
Glanders.
.

."

He

a very jolly summer thus far. I agonized at the Pier for Edwina's sake and have promised to see her there again." Much though he longed for his daughter and grandchildren, York in and hot and down-at-the-heel though he found

New

summer, he preferred being here on

his

own

to enduring the

formal resort life of Narragansett. very sultry nights he ate his supper on the veranda of the grill, which gave onto a court, and later upstairs walked softly down the short hall to Barrett's vacant bedroom, where the silver bed shone in the
moonlight, and lingered a few minutes by the open window to catch the breeze off the little back garden. Returning, he stationed himself beside his own window a still figure reclin-

On

ing on a sofa, so nearly perfectly quiet he could hardly be distinguished in the darkening room while the church clocks chimed from near and far, their strokes emphasizing the desertedness of the city so late in these summer nights.

Sometimes he dozed Sometimes his mind seethed "vulture thoughts," he called them and he stared out with desperate wakefulness at Gramercy Park, whose trees were bathed in the light of a moon more remote and silvery than the low-hanging California moon. One o'clock struck, and after a long interval, two, then three. Often he heard four strike, and he looked expectantly for the gradual paling of the sky in the east; watched the slow taking shape of objects in his room; heard the clatter of milk carts, the imperative whistles bidding others to work.

He called these his

"vulture hours."

IV
Someone had quoted of Booth
line,

in

print

Samuel Johnson's

THE VULTURE HOURS

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,

347

and Booth took to

his friends. It hurt,

in the profession. Louisville. Barrett

He

calling himself "old Superfluous Lags" to though. September marked his fortieth year

celebrated

by opening an engagement in

was not with him, though he had arranged the tour. Better from his treatments, at least on the surface, Barrett was rehearsing a new play in Chicago and had engaged Helena Modjeska to star with Booth at fifteen hundred dollars a week. Booth got three thousand, and his name was billed first. To Joseph Haworth, an actor who dropped by to see him, he spoke of his youth in California: "I could act then, had all
the enthusiasm of youth rosy hopes, great ambitions, and so forth; yet I couldn't convince the people I was a good actor. I

am now old and they are paying five and ten dollars a seat, and
I

cannot act at

all."

New York and were Theater when on November 1 1 the Broadway playing Herald dropped what Booth described as "a load of filth out
He
and Modjeska had moved on to
at the

of a clear sky." It ran a headline

on the first page of its news section:

MODJESKA'S GRIEVANCE

The Great Polish Actress Said to Be Unwilling to Play with Edwin Booth for Personal Reasons

A scurrilous article unwound

itself.

Madame Modjeska, said

the writer, frankly took no interest in the Booth-Barrett comher salary. Neither she nor her huspany outside of pocketing band, the Count Bozenta, would even speak to Barrett "the

Bozenta was supposed to have called arrogant little fellow," him. Booth, on his side, was reputedly jealous of her press notices. But the lady's "Personal Reasons" for seeking a release from her contract were the "ungentlemanly and unchivalrous"
advances Mr. Booth had made her. This writer had interviewed Booth at The Players only the night before, and his account of the interview was broken into by piquant headings:

348

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
MR. BOOTH DENIES IT TOO OLD FOR LOVE MAKING

"I asked Mr. Booth plainly if he had ever conducted himself in such a way as to give offence to Madame Modjeska. 'My dear sir,' Mr. Booth replied, knocking the ashes from his cigar, 'my

dear fellow,

Madame Modjeska and

I are

grandchildren.

Booth explained that he had "foolishly let the (Pierce he calls himself) see me because I thought to dirty dog shield the lady's name. . . . The cur was in drink . . . but
Barrett,

To

My love-making days off the stage are over/

old enough to have "

assured me that not a word of what he termed the 'poppycock' story should be printed."

lence; not to sue. What was one more filthy reporter tearing at him? "This I must expect till the grass is rank above me." The Booth-Modjeska alliance was an idea of Barrett's in-

Booth's lawyer, as he had done when the McVickers spread slander, advised his client to be patient; to keep dignified si-

the sparkling team of Irving and Terry. But it was late. Both stars had seen their best days, and business at the Broadway was only fair. The lovely
spired

by

conceived too

Modjeska

at forty-five was, as far as looks went, past playing girlish parts like Ophelia and Julie in Richelieu, and Booth had had trouble

which of his well-worn vehicles to pit admitted to against the fresher attractions at other houses. Barrett that in York especially he felt stale, "stale in the reiterance of the same old plays. I feel it here more than elsethis season deciding

He

New

where."
Barrett had wanted to revive Richard ///, but Booth objected not only because of Mansfield's recent success as Richard but also because of his sumptuous new production of the play Soon to be launched in New York. "Richard HI with no appropriate scenery & in the face of what is promised by Mansfield, whose 'mount' as well as his performance in Boston, has been highly lauded by the papers here, would, it seems to me, be in the very worst taste possible & do me no good."

Otis Skinner, engaged as leading

man in Barrett's

place,

was

THE VULTURE HOURS

349

horrified to see how much Booth had deteriorated physically since 1880, when they had last acted together. For Booth to act these days with the force Skinner remembered, one of his

support must set the pace for him, "give him the note," and this was very often up to Skinner as Macduff or Horatio. It would be the call of the bugle to the veteran war horse: in a flash Booth would respond, the old spell and power surging into his voice. The old fire blazed, but only for a moment, only to die down. "My flickering spark should be coaxed and husbanded." And again: "The vigor that I occasionally manifest is nervous force merely, which, like a stimulant, leaves me in a collapsed
condition."
Barrett. Matinee days were the worst. acted Richelieu barely able to force through 'Testerday it ... and in the evening I suffered tortures throughout MacI

He was reporting to
The

vertigo which afflicts me & the lack of physical are apparent to all." strength Yet he was better off than Barrett, whose glands were worse again. Barrett's face was pathetically swollen, and he was fearfully sensitive about it. His throat hurt. His speech was affected, so were his nerves. He had a hysterical feeling almost all the
beth.

He had canceled the engageand before the year was out, sailed for play, Germany to try the waters at a spa. "The symptoms he describes are those which I am told are very serious," Booth wrote sadly to Edwina. "I do not think he will ever act again, even if he lives. This is entre nous. He is not hopeful now."
time now, he confided to Booth.

ments of

his

new

And to Barrett:
.
.
.

. . keep up yours. but getting well Follow the doctors' Think of nothing
.

"I have the best hopes

directions to the letter."

One of Booth's admirers had got the habit of popping to his

feet in the theater

whenever Booth took a call and encouraging the audience: "That's right. Call him out again! Call him out with the same again! He won't be with you long." Possibly the art committee of The Players asked Booth in thought, January, 1890, to sit for his portrait to John Singer Sargent.

35O
4<

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
sandpaper and sandpaper your soul,"

Buy some

Tom

Al-

drich warned him before the sittings began. Sargent had the reputation of exposing the secret selves of those he painted. hated the result, and Irving had sat to him in London, had

would never let it be shown. "Very good, but mean about the chin at present," Ellen Terry called Irving's portrait before it was finished. "There sat Henry and there by his side
the picture, and
I

could scarce tell one from t'other."

his new subject. He placed Booth in a characteristic pose: standing, gracious and meditative, with head inclined a little, as though listening, one foot forward

Sargent had observed

a step, and both thumbs hooked in the trouser pockets. Just so had he seen Booth stand at The Players with his friends, deep in the conversations of which his own part was chiefly a silent encouragement. Booth even caught himself like this onstage, especially as Hamlet. The framed portrait was hung above the mantel in the club reading room. The figure seemed rather too tall, the legs were too slim and finickingly drawn, but with the grave, beautiful face even Aldrich was
satisfied.
It

was thus he looked

his

Aldrich wrote, and ended

win Booth

at

'The Players'

"

poem

"Sargent's Portrait of

Ed-

with an invocation:

Cruel Time, breath sweeps mortal things away, Spare long this image of his prime, That others standing in the place

Whose

Where save

as ghosts

we come no

more,

May know what sweet, majestic face

The
gentle Prince of Players wore.

V
"I shall thank God from the very dregs of my soul when I get through this awful tour." Booth was writing from Chicago

THE VULTURE HOURS

on March
the
20, 1890, to Barrett,

351

who was

German baths
all

in Paris waiting for

is

to open.

derry down." The road this time had led him through Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In Boston at the end of January his hotel room had overlooked the Common, thick with pigeons, and one of the birds, a white one, had perched on his window sill every morning for just as long as he sat at the desk writing letters. Rain or shine, it visited him faithfully. "I wonder who it is or was!" this was to Bispham.
I

but

day am utterly down,

"My

health (at night)

excellent,

tenant of a house in Dorchester, a good carriage drive answered her bell to find on her doorstep an oldish man out, who asked if he might see the house, explaining that he had lived there once. He gave no name, and the woman didn't then identify him. They went upstairs, where the caller disappeared inside a bedroom and shut the door. He slipped out again a
later, saying only that his wife, whom he loved very much, had died in that room. From Philadelphia in February Booth wrote again to tell " Bispham that business there was great, 'Tis remarkable how the old nag draws in his decadence! Perhaps 'tis his last 'spurt'

The

few minutes

on the home

stretch."

and the weather was vue, which were two possible reasons why, though they were reasons he would have laughed at even two years earlier. A fair number of people still traveled from Washington to see him act, and some spent the night afterward at the Mount Vernon Hotel, where he was staying. Coming home on Friday after the play, he had to stalk the gauntlet across the lobby
to the elevator between a double line of women and
there
girls.

Then

were two

sisters,

seventeen and twenty, from a good Bal-

timore family,
cards.

who ventured into his hotel and sent up their had got a "crush" on him. Booth had them in, They

352

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

what they were there giggling and nudging, and asked sternly for. "Oh," chirped the seventeen-year-old, "we saw you play
last

night and came to

make your

acquaintance/'

Too old to be attracted, too tired and depressed to be lenient

or amused, Booth gave the sisters a terrific calling down, warnHe held up the ing them of the danger in running after actors. little cards between thumb and forefinger like something obscene, and pretending to assume the names on them were fictitious, said harshly: "If I knew your right names I should

he made two recordings on the phonograph, wondrous new invention of Edwina Thomas A. Edison. Booth recited into the huge earlike horn
for
Othello's address to the senators and Hamlet's "To be, or not to be," finding it hard to speak with full feeling in cold blood. He was in Detroit when he wrote to Edwina, who had con-

certainly tell your parents." So to Chicago, where on March 19

him on a critic's praise (the enthusiastic notices could be counted now): "Yes, it is indeed most gratifying to feel that age has not rendered my work stale and tiresome. . . But as for the compensation? Nothing of fame or fortune . can compensate for the spiritual suffering. To pass life in a sort of dream, where 'Nothing is but what is not,' a loneliness in the very midst of a constant crowd, as it were, is not a desirable condition of existence, especially when the body also " has to share the 'penalty of greatness? "Dear old Pal," Indianapolis, Vincennes, Decatur. . . Booth exhorted Barrett, "dear old Party. ." His letters were crammed with urgings to "get well soon? to "take care of yourgratulated
.
.

self."

ful:

Barrett answered cheerfully, and Booth in turn grew cheer"Mightily rejoiceth your antique Pal at ye good knews

frothee!"
that "any attempt at exercise sighed exhaustion." Skinner used to call for him before their entrances in his dressing room hazy with smoke.

Of

his

own

health he

only

intensifies

my

Booth would lay down his cigar, try to stand, then, sick with dizziness, would reel and stumble, and it would be minutes be-

THE VULTURE HOURS

fore he could negotiate the trip to the

353
Skinner's arm.
first

Back

in

November when Skinner played Macduff for the

wing on

had been so nervous in the fight he had almost brained Booth with a terrific wallop on the crown of the head, which Booth's guard was too feeble to parry. Booth's wig and cat of chain mail saved him from concussion. He had staggered, whispered, "Go on," and afterward smiled over the near thing,
rime, he

but Skinner was in a frenzy. When he was not acting, Booth was resting. He and Modwere perfectly friendly, but they hardly ever met except jeska onstage. Between the acts Madame Modjeska sat in her dressing room, a Japanese kimono flung around her costume, brooding over a lapboard on which she played solitaire with cards not much bigger than thumbnails. Curls of perfumed cigarette smoke floated from her half-open door, while out of Booth's

poured acrid clouds from his chain of cigars. After the performance each went his way: Booth to his hotel
or more often on these grueling stretches of one-night stands to his Pullman drawing room, where he sat in a daze, too dull and empty to read or write letters. Outside the win-

room

dow hills and fields picked up speed in the same night-dimmed landscape his train had been passing for forty years. And the
though it feared the darkness, and underneath the wheels ground along the track, and he heard the syncopated chuffing of the locomotive, which seemed to say: "And so to bed, ancTso to bed, and so to bed,"
train whistle wailed, as

VI
Barrett
sciatica

was home and actually seemed better, but Booth had

badly this autumn of 1890. Getting out of bed in the morning, he couldn't walk at first without clutching two chairs. He was noticed hobbling through the streets leaning on a cane, which set the reporters buzzing. To scotch the stories of their to the theater failing health he and Barrett took themselves as spectators, sitting in a front box to see the comedian Francis Wilson, who after touching off each of his jokes looked up for the famous pair's reaction. Barrett would nave jumped to his

354

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

feet, be pacing the box and guffawing, but Booth stayed seated where he was with a tiny, sad, set smile, showing his amusement only by a twitch of the chest. Wilson often ran across him at The Players. "/ used to enjoy acting comedy," Booth confided softly, "especially farce. Oh, I went through it all. I went through it all." Wilson had a photograph of the tragedian and begged to

have it signed. "Certainly," said Booth, but he never got around

to
it.

on his desk with the corners curling, and at last he admitted what was delaying him was the Shakespearian quotation Wilson wanted. "I'm just too lazy to look it up or think it it gladly anything." up. If you'll provide it, I'll write anxious to make sure of his souvenir, hastily thought Wilson, of something, which Booth obediently copied.
It lay

On November

stint in Baltimore.

The

Booth and Barrett began their winter's decline in Booth's powers since the

spring was obvious.

He

stumbled over words,

left

out

lines

and sometimes confused the play with another, transposing whole speeches. To Edwina he admitted that this season for the first time ever he had toiled through several performances "without my usual clear mental grasp of the character, and always with an uncertainty of gait and a thinness of voice, to

And to William Winter: "I don't know what's to become of me. I grow weaker all the time, and if I can't play the parts well I must leave the stage."
Very
gently Winter advised him to do just that. Booth
didn't really want the advice, not this advice, not yet. There was still in him a dogged vitality and as the weeks wore on his

my own ear, at least."

acting incredibly improved. "Here I am!' he greeted Bispham

from
I've

Philadelphia.

been yet mis season.

"On deck still, and feel much steadier than I am better in every way."
after

Again to Edwina from Boston

Macbeth "Tonight
I

acted and felt throughout the play just as ever Not a stagger, not a sign of feebleness."

did at

my

best.

Nym Cnnkle thought Booth and Barrett should both get off

THE VULTURE HOURS

355

the stage "mummified actors . . . who are enduring by reason of packed spice and frankincense, that keep them in an unchangeable and antiseptic condition."

The unusually short tour wound up in Providence in Decemplayed without his partner until March 2, 1891, when they began anew at the Broadway Theater in New York. They did The Merchant and Julius Caesar. Barrett's Bassanio was painfully mature. As for Booth he should retire, said the Times. Barrett's Cassius was as good as ever. Not so Booth's
ber. Barrett

Brutus, and those

who

loved him went once, then, shocked

and disappointed, stayed away.

On March 8 a venomous attack

Crinkle appeared in The World. "Nowhere,'* jibed by Crinkle, "but at a public funeral and a public performof Shakespeare do we parade the relics of departed worth." ance He denounced the "tottering Mr. Booth . . whose work was marked and marred by a careless feebleness." As Shylock,

Nym Nym

even Booth's make-up was slovenly, while as Brutus he seemed to go to sleep onstage, standing with his eyes shut and starting Crinkle painted a cruel picture of when his cue sounded.

Nym

full circle. Booth was in the position of Forrest thirty years before when, old and half-paralyzed, Forrest was being forced off the stage by the buoyant young Booth. But "Mr. Booth's frame," taunted Crinkle, "is not His interest is. He is not careworn, he is careless." paralyzed. Crinkle asked "if it be not better indeed to stop And than to mar his own record by the want of anima to sustain it?" Edwina, sick at heart, wrote to her father. In his answer he " came as near scolding her as he ever did: 'Tis childish to be

how the wheel had come

Nym

Nym

so crushed
is

sacred.

by such The
. .

vile wretches,

with

whom

no reputation

as scorn, and stand since ceased to read 'theatrical news,' and have succeeded long in letting 'dear friends' know that I avoid such rot, and

man unshaken by it,

public

(or

woman) must bear the I have done. ... I have

my

that it is brutal to

mention it to me."

On Wednesday, March 18, Booth and Barrett were announced for Richelieu. On Wednesday morning Barrett

356

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
at the
at

seemed bouncing, and in the suite he had taken

Hotel, needing

Windsor
Players,

more space than

his

bedroom

The

he was vivaciously occupied with the scene designer's drawings for a new pky. In the evening they arrived early at the theater, had been there an hour or so when someone asked Booth to
step into his partner's dressing
feeling Barrett had
ill.

room because Mr.

Barrett

was

gone straight to his room and still in his hat and overcoat had sat down, tilted his chair back against the wall, let his head droop and covered his face with his hands. He had momentarily given way and had been crying when Booth came in. Booth leaned over and tried to coax him to go home, but Barrett refused. Controlling himself, he went to his make-up table to paint his still swollen face, dressed himself for De Mauprat, a young man's part, and the play began. Booth felt better this night than he had in weeks, Paradoxically, and Adam Badeau, who was in the house, was amazed at his force. But Barrett kept pushing himself until the third act, when the regular business gave him a chance to bend over the bed on which Richelieu was lying. Then very low he whispered: "I can't

He had only a few more lines before his exit. He got himself offstage and another actor finished the play for him. He was
put to bed at the Windsor. Booth saw him next day burning with fever. It hurt him to talk but be out: "Don't come gasped near me, Edwin! My disease may be infectious. You must be

go on."

very careful." He had caught no more than a heavy cold, but his two doctors feared pneumonia and with reason, for it set in almost immediately and in his debilitated condition, weakened by his chronic disease, was almost sure to be fatal. His wife was telegraphed for. Their family doctor had broken it to her long ago that her husband's glandular trouble was incurable and his days were numbered, but she had kept this to herself, though expecting for more than a year to be called to his side at any

moment.

On Thursday night a substitute played Macduff The

.

third

THE VULTURE HOURS

Barrett's night, Friday,

357

name was removed from the playbflL Booth was worried, but not alarmed. He was joyfully preocown improvement ("Sure it is, I am as one recupied with his newed since two days past")* and after the performance he sent Theodore Bromley, their manager, to the hotel to inquire "how Lawrence was getting on." Booth was sitting in the grill at The Players eating his supper of bread and milk when Bromley returned and said flatly and seriously: "Mr. Barrett has gone." "Where to?" asked Booth, whose first thought was that Mrs. Barrett had taken her husband home. But Barrett was dead.

CHAPTER

16

Scratch.,

Temporary

III

And flights

Good-night, sweet prince, of angels sing thee to thy rest! Hamlet, Act V, scene 2

room at The Players was of a state official with its in-and-outflowing streams of callers, as with Bromley's help he canceled engagements and adjusted broken contracts. On Monday, March 23, 1891, Barrett's body was taken to Cohasset, where, less than a week after his last performance, he was buried within earshot of the ocean waves.
Barrett's death. Booth's
like the office

A LITTLE -world within a world was set rocking by

ac

the lookout for

it,

he was not so much shocked by

sudden going

as fearfully depressed. Later in the

week he was

way out of the club when he met a boy rushing in with a package. He knew what it was and instructed: "Take it upstairs" meaning to The Players library on the second floor
on
his

"and unwrap it/' But the boy climbed all three flights up to Booth's apartment, stripped the wrappings off a death mask of Barrett and set it on the center table. When Booth came home
358

A
the
first

SCRATCH,
at

TEMPORARY

ILL

359

thing

he saw in the darkened room was Barrett's face

gleaming
at the

mm.

For the sake of the company he finished out the engagement Broadway Theater; there was only a week left. They one more week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, played which ended Booth's part of the season, and after which the others, who had expected to continue through the spring with Barrett, were thrown out of work. "Mr. Booth," said a critic, "has gone weariedly and wearisomely through the final weeks
of his season here
.

speare blankly indeed, and presenting so weak

pitiful."

delivering the blank verse of Shakea sight as to be

performance in Brooklyn was a matinee of Hamlet 4. Somehow the public knew by instinct what Booth refused to know, that this performance was likely to be, not only his last of the season, but his farewell to the stage for good. Very early in the morning an enormous crowd of ticket seekers, conspicuous for the number of white-haired men and women in it and for the dozens of children clinging to their
last

The

on April

Academy. The curtain Never had Barrett's eye and hand been more wanted. "The players went shivering around complaining of the cold," objected the Brooklyn Eagle, "when leaves were green
hands, formed outside the Brooklyn
rose.

over the trees, while in the graveyard the property man had neglected to give the digger any earth to throw out of the pit and the dummy that was supposed to represent Ophelia's body and was not a bit like it was deposited in a pit about a foot and a half deep."
all

Costumes and scenery were shabby and old, the company apathetic, and the central figure, alas, was all these things. Booth's voice was so faint it could hardly be caught; most of the soliloquies went for nothing. Only in the interview with Ophelia and the business of hurling the recorder from him was there some of the old contagious excitement. Yet his reading when it could be heard and the mysterious melancholy were still beautiful. The art of a lifetime came to die support of fadnature. David Belasco, leaning forward in the audience, as ing

was

360

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

were many others, in his eagerness to catch some touch of be or not to be" that "the genius, remembered of the "To familiar words seemed to come from Booth's lips for the first
time, to utter thoughts then
first formulated."

Hamlet could never have run a hundred nights. The audience let its star walk off in silence after his great
But
this

at the finish of each act. The points, only clapping decorously reviews were not so much cruel as regretful. As the Eagle

of the great creation was there, expressed it, "The framework seemed to be but the whole performance palsied." At the end, however, there was stamping and bravoing as the house showed its true affection. Booth murmured a little
at the snobbery speech. He had always claimed to be indignant of the public toward actors and the condescension implied by words to an audience were in the applause. Yet these, his last, traditional vein of the player who lives to please, must please to live: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for your great

kindness. I hope that this

is not the last time I shall have the honor of appearing before you. ... I hope that my health and strength may be improved so that I can serve you better, and I shall always try to deserve the favor you have shown." He dressed immediately, as he always did, and was among

the first ready to leave. The instant he stepped through the stage door the actors still inside heard ringing cheers and hurrying
after him they saw Montague Place billowing with people. Faces were at all the windows, and on the scaffolding of a

building opposite, which was being repaired, men and boys had found a foothold on every plank. There was a mighty waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Police on horseback forced a passage for Booth to his carriage. Those near enough to see his face thought he seemed much moved. But those farther away could only see him lift his hat, look up and all around as if scanning the pit and galleries, then bow and climb into the carriage, which moved off slowly down a cleared lane.

Manager Bromley declared in the press that Mr. Booth planned to rest for a whole year, not, however, to retire. And

A
this really

SCRATCH, A TEMPORARY ILL

361

was Booth's plan. Again, though, the public sensed differently. Saddened by his last performance, it began to think of him and the papers to refer to him as a figure on the shelf whose career was definitely over. "Booth at 58 is older than many a man of 70," one critic pronounced, and again the actor's life story was lugged out and summarized. Booth in the meantime was at Narragansett with Edwina and her husband and his two grandchildren, little Mildred and Edwin, "my pets." He broke the visit by one to Jefferson at Crow's Nest, the house Jefferson had built in Buzzards Bay. It was right on the water, a roomy, luxurious place with a "art window" on either side of the front door. stained-glass window had a picture of William Warren as Touchstone, One the other of Booth as Hamlet. Along with the rollicking Jefferson tribe, Booth went to a Fourth of July celebration at which Grover Cleveland was guest of honor. Three people were needed to help Booth out of the carriage and across die lawn. They sat eating ice cream and watching fireworks burst and
the black water, and a reporter in the gaudily disintegrate over

background noted that Booth was "moody and

silent."

Not so Jefferson, who talked ten to the dozen while his face
and had started a garden, explaining that
"it's

radiated cheer; the lines in it were all laughter lines. Off the stage he had half a dozen hobbies, spent satisfying hours paint-

ing in

oils,

all

old

so full of hope." people To match Jefferson's painting Booth had a gift for sculpture, discovered many years ago in Launt Thompson's studio. But
talent for writing, never to create had left him. One impulse developed. he had achieved in these last years: a serenity, thing, though, a calm relaxing of his hold on life, as sublime in its way as wonderful slowJefferson's joy in living. As they strolled with
it.

should have one

he had made no use of

He

had a

And now

all

ness along the beach together

ified

Comedy and Tragedy personBooth turned his eyes away from the sea to sweep the desolate strand, and then "with a strange and prophetic kind
of poetry,"

so said Jefferson later, "he likened it to his own health, the falling leaves, die withered sea-weed, the failing

362
receding from

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
fast

dying grass on the shore, and the ebbing tide that was
us."

to Jefferson who since Anderson's, and now Bardeath was becoming the friend of his bosom, for they were members of the same vagabond brotherhood with a bond and richer than the one binding Booth to his gentlestronger men friends to him Booth spoke quietly of his approaching death. He seemed hopeful and pleased at the approach. "Fm
rett's,

And

ready to go." Then they spoke of the scrambling, climbing, sliding fortunes of actors, of the intrigues and savageries of their profession, and Booth said: "Joe, Fve come to that part of my life when I can even rejoice at the success of my enemies."

n
For the first time in years there was no autumn season beginning. There were no rehearsals, no responsibilities. He had let go. And suddenly he looked much older. He had always dressed scrupulously and well, how he grew careless. Someone saw him on the street holding his little grandson by the hand, a striking-looking old man, sloppily dressed, clean-shaven, with heavy bkck eyebrows and soft whitening hair that flowed

down under his straw hat nearly to his shoulders.

Sitting across

from him

in frdnt of the fire at

travel.

The

Players,

"Fve been traveling all my life," said Booth. "What I want now is to stay in one place with things I like around me. Here is my bed, and here is the fire, and here are my books, and here you come to see me." Then he added: "I suppose I shall wear out here."
. . .

William Winter advised him to

the walls everywhere his face looked down at him in and marble, lighting the heavily curtained rooms and paint dim corridors. He saw himself young, dark-haired, debonair; in middle age; in character as Hamlet, Richelieu, and lago; and he protested when Francis Wilson wanted to The Players give
still

From

where

And there were his trophies:

another portait. "Please don't! Even now I can't go anyin the house without bumping into a Booth."
the

Hundred Nights of Hamlet

SCRATCH,

TEMPORARY

ILL

363

medal; the gold and silver laurel wreaths he had won in Germany. There were portraits of his father; there was the framed
playbill
stairs

of his

first

appearance as Tressel. Upstairs and downstairs

and flocking on the walls alongside the

were

pic-

tures, posters, memorabilia of the theatrical world, of professional ancestors from Richard Burbage down: the death

mask of Kean, the painting of Rachel in her

"feline loveliness,"

dozens of likenesses covering every practicable inch of the murky wall space. In glass cases were crowns, swords, quills, canes, bits of tarnished cloth, every sort of stage property like jewels of great price, for they had been proudly exhibited new worn and handled by the great ones of the profession. member of The Players, Richard Harding Davis, exclaimed when he saw the display: "Why, I have an interesting relic Pd like to give the club, the playbill used at Ford's Tlieater in Washington on the night Lincoln was" He stopped, but too late, for Booth had thrown up his hands and left the room. The Players was Booth's home, and he was starved for do-

showed excessive interest in the running of the mesticity. never missing a directors' meeting, feeling it "outrageous" club,

He

when one of the Dalys, Augustin or his brother Joseph, skipped

several meetings
if

he did

it

again Booth meant to take steps.

He soberly studied the list of candidates for membership, votor rowdies, annoyed ing against any suspected lightweights and hurt when they were occasionally elected in spite of him. He sat at the long reading table downstairs in the room where Sargent's portrait of him, looking much more than two above the mantel. Whenever he years younger, presided from

was observed coming in, a

the room. speaking a

deferential

murmur rippled through

haltingly from member to member, word to each. Most stood until he was seated, and men who wore their hats in the house snatched them off. for a late breakUsually he appeared in the grill about noon

He moved

down wearily at his special table. His old-fashioned dark suit looked as though he had slept in it, his stand-up collar was twitched to one side. He would order twice as much food
fast, sitting

364

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

as he could eat, then pick at it his little joke. "It encourages the kitchen staff and besides it sends up the club's receipts." On Saturdays about midnight the grill was hilarious with the after-theater crowd, and he often slipped downstairs to join in. There might be Wilson, John Drew, Otis Skinner, and Maurice Barrymore, whose little son John, with a round face and Dutch haircut, had been introduced to Booth. After he had listened awhile, Booth's mournful eyes would lighten, the crow's feet at their corners would deepen and lift; he would cock an eyebrow; the miracle of a smile would almost, though never quite, break on his lips, and the younger men would settle themselves to hear his soft, fatigued voice launch a train of

funny

stories.

Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, was Ladies' Day, the one day of the year when women were allowed in. It was Booth's
favorite

day

to stay upstairs.

Once Wilson induced him

to

entrance down the broad stairway across the and into the twittering throng. Every woman in the lounge place headed straight for him until he clung for rescue to Wil" son's arm and muttered: "For God's sake, don't leave me! As time passed, he ventured down less often. On fine days he still descended sedately in the diminutive elevator, installed especially for him, and shuffled out to make the circuit of Gramercy Park. Sometimes he stopped for a pass or two at marbles with the neighborhood boys, one of whom was young Noble MacCracken, whom the years to come metamorphosed from a small boy "knuckling down" on the street corner into the tall president of Vassar College. To Dr. MacCracken the recurring figure of the tragedian in his slow promenade was a feature of his boyhood: "Mr. Booth was sad, and I
habitually
recall

make a grand

my father saying that he bore his family's tragedy all the

upstairs,

time.

But for longer and longer periods Booth hibernated where from has sofa by the window he could see the

greenery of the park below, then the skeleton boughs, then snow, then green again. His room was a bachelor's room dusty, a little gloomy, needing flowers or a lighted fire to bring it to life. It

SCRATCH,

TEMPORARY

ILL

365

was oppressive with darkly gleaming furniture, with photocurios and peculiar keepsakes, not one of which would graphs, he willingly part with. Laurence Hutton was forever badgerhim to sign a list specifically bequeathing his precious ing to his friends, but he showed no eagerness to do the things
signing.

Perhaps he should have. Fifteen years after his death Edwina, who was going abroad to live, had to dear out her cellar of some of her father's personal effects, and they were sold at David Belasco, Julia Marlowe, and other theapublic auction. ter people bought a few mementoes, but the general public showed little interest and the auctioneer almost wept over the small prices. Richard IIFs crown went for twelve dollars, the great mace to Belasco for eighteen dollars, the royal coat with fleurs-de-lis and lions woven in gold thread to a costumer for twelve dollars. Most of the costumes were let go piecemeal to
at

different buyers. Richelieu's surplice of rare old lace collected odd times by Booth was knocked down for nineteen dollars.

Booth's personal tobacco box went to Belasco for eight dollars. One old-time theatergoer could bear it no longer. He choked and broke away from the listless bidding, saying that "it reminds me of the Roman soldiers shaking dice for the clothes in the story of the Crucifixion." Booth's room was divided by a fretwork arch and draw curtain that shut off the alcove where his bed was. The brass bed, which had a tester and curtains, was spread with the crazy quilt Mrs. Anderson had made him. On the bureau in the alcove were two small photographs, one of his mother, stern and sad To the left of the bed in old age, and one of his grandchildren. in the most retired position in the room was the picture of John Wilkes from which Edwin had never parted. Wilson caught sight of it during one of his calls, couldn't keep his eyes off it and was about to say something when he met Booth's eye, and Booth shook his head. On the center table under the chandelier in the main section of the room lay a bronze cast of Booth's hand holding Edwina's baby hand. To the right of the fireplace leered three

366
skulls, all

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

rested

used in Hamlet. Many years back one of them had on the shoulders of Lovett, the horse thief, and on one Booth had written: "The rest is silence," followed by his

signature.

His desk stood against the wall, neatly piled with sheets of the club writing paper embossed with masks of Comedy and and just Tragedy. Above the desk was a portrait of his father a panel hewn out below the portrait he had fixed appropriately of the wood of the giant cherry tree from the farm in Maryland. On the wall nearest the window hung the most remarkable picture in the room, of Mary Devlin. Years after Booth's death one of the distinguished guests to be taken on the grand tour of The Players was the Scottish
Scott gloomed through playwright J. M. Barrie. The taciturn the building saying nothing but "Ah," until he arrived at Booth's room, which had become "the Booth Room," a de-

humanized shrine where visitors instinctively dropped their voices. Barrie stopped under Mary's picture, still living, still fresh in the shrinelike atmosphere, and stood gazing up at it, sinking his eyes into it. "A verra byutiful face," he said earnestly
to Wilson,
face."

who was showing him

around.

"A

verra byutiful

to pose for one

In his room, with his things reinforcing him, Booth consented more portrait, a drawing in black and white.

The

artist had trouble persuading him to sit in a handsome antique chair instead of his particular Victorian armchair upholstered in rep. Booth gave in at last he always gave in now

and

it

came

to light that
it

chair because

he was partial to the rep-covered had stood in Jefferson's parlor in Richmond

when Mary

Devlin was living at Jefferson's. The chair was associated with his courtship. After his marriage he had. asked Jefferson for it, and ever since it had had a place in his home "I would have liked to have it in the portrait for Mollie's sake,"

Then he spoke very lovingly about Mary Devlin. The Richmond-born sculptor Edward Valentine stopped in to see him. They spoke of Mary, looking at her picture, and

SCRATCH,

TEMPORARY

ILL

367

the sculptor ventured: "I will describe her to you. She had black hair, grayish eyes, and a very white skin. Is that a deof her?" scription

"No," said IJooth. "Her hair was brown, and her complexion was not so white."

Then

and Booth confirmed it: "I have seen her sitting with such an that I thought she was dead." expression of eye missed Barrett. More than once as he chatted with some He caller, a horse-drawn truck rumbling by on Twentieth Street

Valentine spoke of the sad expression in Mary's eyes

made vibrate the strings of the automatic harp that still hung on the door of Barrett's bedroom down the hall. "There comes poor Lawrence now," Booth would whisper with macabre
humor.
often his caller was Winter, who was much given to lachrymose prophecies and alarmed comparisons of the past with the present, in favor of the past. Winter's reputation as a critic had begun to dim slightly* He feared and hated the turn

Very

toward realign and "rank, deadly pessimism" the drama was taking. He was contemptuous of Boucicault's sordid plays. He despised Ibsen, championed recently by George Bernard Shaw, and he moaned to Booth that the days of idealism in the drama were passing. Booth agreed, but mildly. He was outside the combat. When he talked of the past it was of personal things. Sometimes a biting word about the self-seekers he had known broke through his hard-won detachment. Once he mused aloud to Winter: I was always of a boyish spirit, but there was an air of melancholy about me that made me seem more serious
I really was." Francis Wi] Booth was grateful: "You prime him with the latest gossip and make me think I'm still of the present." It was hard for others to include him in the swim, either in their talk or thought; his he went to the productive years were so plainly over. When theater as one of the audience, it failed to stir him. He was too want to act. He had nothdepleted mentally and physically to left to give the public. For ten years he had longed for ing

than

368
leisure.

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Now that he had
into

it, the letdown and sameness of his life an almost comatose indifference. Wilson discovered late one day that Booth had forgotten to eat anysince the night before and comthing. He had taken no food in a puzzled way of feeling weak. plained "Mr. Booth, if you don't eat how can you expect to live?" clucked the little comedian as he steered Booth down to the

depressed him

lL

Booth looked
son."

matter straight at him. "It doesn't

much, Wil-

Ill

chair on the lawn at Narragansett this 1802 and watched his grandchildren's tireless racings and stumblings. Sometimes he loosed an unconscious sigh. He never complained of the children's noise, though at meals he might whimsically reprove them for shrill voices by quoting

He sat propped in a

summer of

King Lear:
Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.
His son-in-law took a snapshot of him seated on the porch: the old man with the untidy white hair and tragic eyes, the drooping lips, the pinched throat, the tired angle of the head

and of the shoulders as they rested against the high chair back. There were other pictures snapped, some so unfair to Booth that Edwina would never allow them to be published. He was ill this summer and she nursed him. "Daughter, you make me like to be sick," he said more than once, reaching up out of the bed to hold her hand. He would allow no one to help him in dressing or in any
of his small occupations, though his hand sometimes refused to do his will and moved sharply the wrong way. Still more mystifying were the gaps in his consciousness, lost moments when
fix his

he seemed to drop asleep. Often when he exerted himself to mind on some definite thing, it buckled under him like drunken legs. He tried to explain this to Bispham, writing on

A
August

SCRATCH, A TEMPORARY ILL

369

14; it was his last long letter to this old friend: "Many have faded into weeks since I have written you, but not days since my many attempts to do so, dear boy; they have been many and frequent, but all failures, desperate. ... All my efforts have been senseless, and even now it is with
difficulty

manage to scribble in desperation this bungling scrawl/' In October the Grossmanns spent some weeks in the resort town of Lakewood, New Jersey, and Booth went with them.
I

"The most

striking figure this fall

among

the guests at the

Laurel House," burbled a reporter, "is that of a feeble, totterwith a pale and wonderfully sad face, who makes ing old man his way feebly through the corridors with the assistance of a

heavy oaken cane. You would hardly know that it was Edwin Booth unless he raised those surprisingly lustrous and melanwhich remain unchanged." choly eyes were not quite unchanged, though. A strange expresThey sion had entered them, a pained and worried look as if he asked
. . .

"What am I doing here?" This was something new, the reporter was told. Mr. Booth had only had this look since his illness in the summer. The really extraordinary thing was his appearance of age. It was hard to believe he wasn't yet fifty-nine. The reporter inquired if Mr. Booth ever talked or seemed to think of acting again. No, never "He doesn't think of anything more than he can help," Grossmann told the newspaper man. Every day Booth joined die male guests in the hotel smoking room. He took the air on the veranda, seated in one of the ranged rocking chairs, and struggling to his feet each time his daughter came up to him. He played careful games with his played sitting down, for he was so weak lively grandchildren had once accidentally knocked him flat. It little that the boy was Grossmann, smart in a nautical jacket and white trousers, who first interviewed anyone from outside who asked to see his father-in-law. He and Edwina would read a recommended book first, then turn it over to Booth if it were light enough. Booth often drove around the lake with the Grossmanns and sometimes walked alone into the village, a shambling figure
himself:

370
his tousled

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
bow
cravat,

in a black frock coat and waistcoat and a black

white hair thrown back from his forehead as if by constant combings with the fingers. The village people had grown used to him, only strangers stopped to stare. On rare days he pushed on as far as the lake bordered with dark pines under a wintry sky and rested there, leaning on his cane. The melancholy spot seemed to have a charm for him. As the grandfather's clock in The Players intoned midnight, ushering in November 13, 1892, one of "the boys" down at
the billiard table remembered this was the founder's fifty-ninth birthday. The building was canvassed, and the seventy-five or so members in it all signed their names to a round robin of good wishes, which was carried up to the third floor. Enthusiasm was dampened, however, when the bearer brought back word that Mr. Booth was sleeping and couldn't be disturbed. Again it was Founder's Night, December 31. The New Year had been banged and tootled in, and inside the mellow fastness of The Players a toast had been drunk to Booth who, supported under both elbows, crept across the hall to the elevator, hesitated at the elevator door, turnfed himself around to face the members and waved and smiled. This was the last time many of them saw him. Edwina had taken her children south. Without her near him he felt alone indeed, yet try as he would it was the end of Janfinally brought himself to write. "My darling daughter: Every day for the last month I have determined to write, but time has passed, and to girl still neglected.

uary when he

my

forgive me, and

Try

I'll

do better

after this."

Unaccountably, three more weeks slipped by before he wrote again on February 19 "it seems much longer, quite three months; and I can offer no better reason for my neglect than sheer laziness. ... So it has been day after day until now, when I find myself overwhelmed by a heap of unanswered letters." He was too jaded and dazed to with the heap. Several cope people at once had sent pictures of him for his autograph. He had laid them aside, and when he turned back to them had got

A
them
all

SCRATCH,

TEMPORARY

ILL

371

mixed up. So kind Harry Magonigle persuaded him them all, and then Magonigle wrote to the senders askto describe their precious special ing them photos. Then Bisto sign

pham and Magonigle took over the answering of letters while Booth dozed on his sofa, absolutely overpowered by his strange inertia. "I can't account for it, except my lack of exercise. I do nothing but snooze all day, and see very few to talk to,
except the doctors." He had three doctors

now who

applied electricity,
it.

which

was

Their visit was the high point of his day. He had been outdoors only twice since Edwina's going. Magonigle sat with him every evening, staying to the very end to put him to bed and torn out the ~~1iere were no more wakeful vulture hours. He went
disagreeable.
Still,

he

felt better after

which make me very happy in my seldom go out or downstairs, keepgloomy all the time. Have been ing upstairs nearly only to Daly's, and shall go again there to see the 'Twelfth Night' on Tuesday." But the performance, with Ada Rehan as a flame-headed, hoydenish Viola, merely tired Booth and gave him no pleas-

to bed at half past eight and slept heavily. "Every now and then," he wrote to Edwina on February 26, "I receive your

welcome

letters, darling, club-room; for I

my

ure. "I don't feel yet the least desire for the stage, although two visits have set all the managers and agents after me
.

There is a great Italian . for engagements, of course. . actress here, a Mile. Duse, the greatest yet, they say. I shall see her in a few nights." Then, lo, it was March, a dull, cold month with snow every
sat

day or the threat of snow. Booth had four doctors now. He down determinedly to write to Edwina in the kte afternoon on March 4, a dismal Sunday: "Another day is about gone, and Sunday night is creeping ahead of me, and no letter mailed

for you yet. . . . I can't account for it." Scrawls from his grandchildren lay on his desk mutely reproaching him for his lack of response. But he could not, simply could not summon up strength to answer them. "I can't

muster energy enough ... but only

silently

wish them

all

372
sorts of

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

with my lovgood things, to share with darling mama, This one letter had occupied his whole day, ing thoughts." to collect himself. I'll soon do better. with
frequent stops
.

I can't scribble

even half that I hoped for today."

to organize the simplest phrase, even what is the cause. I certainly am much

He

found

it difficult

to spell. "I don't know better than I was, in all respects, until I attempt to write, when all wits seem to go astray, and my nerves get beyond con-

my

trol."
15. "Several days have gone had energy to write more than a teleby without my having After breakfast I take a paper and lie on gram to you. where I get most sunlight, till about 3: 30 or 4 o'clock, my sofa, when I dine a litde, and after go to Carry's Or Bispham's, or to the pky, in order to get a vain hope lor an interest in the
.
.

He was writing now on March

.

theatre.

My
is

deafness

is

so

much

increased that I don't hear a

word

that

spoken on the

stage.

...

won't

promise any

more, but
ing. ... "March

I'll

try to finish this badly begun letter in the

morn-

Good morning, my little ones! Only 'tis nearly evening again; the way I let time slip away is a caution to babies. ... 'tis now nearly tomorrow evening ahead, and I'm
16.

just about

awake, and have only just scratched a few lines

addressed to
South, where

my good little 'Babes in the Woods'

'tis

Here

'tis

just as

'way down and warm, amongst the birds and flowers. cold as winter still. I'm really cold and shivernice

ing while I try to write."

IV
northern spring grew milder Booth was able to out occasionally. Badeau called, discovered him ready to get leave for a walk, and offered to go with him. On the sidewalk Booth gripped Badeau's arm nervously. It took Badeau, who was in his spry prime at over sixty, a half an hour to help his old friend toddle around the Park and back to the clubhouse.
as the

But

Things went better when they

talked of old days. Badeau had

sat peacefully upstairs

and

come

to

know Booth when he

health had been so much a part of him, he had been so young, so poetic, so romantic, that Badeau found it sad beyond words to see him in his decadence, "to see his crumble and

SCRATCH, A TEMPORARY ILL 373 was dazzling New York for the first time; when his beauty and
A
powers

waste away; to see him decrepit, weary, worn,

alive

who had been with expression, captivating in bearing, majestic, terrible,

by
turns."

tender,

his eyes," said Badeau, "retained their marvelous beauty, like a lamp burning in a deserted temple, or the soul

"Only

looking out through the windows of that body

leave."

it

was soon to

Presiding as usual at a club directors' meeting, Booth seemed to be diinking of something else. The others deferentially recalled his attention to the matter under discussion.
in New York and on took Booth with them to see Alessandro Salvini, April 3 they son of Tommaso, in Don Caesar de Bazan at the Manhattan Opera House. Don Caesar had been one of Booth's roles. It was wrote a lurking journalist, to watch the man, who so pitiable, short a time before had been the first star of them all, inch

Edwina and her husband were back

across the lobby through the parting in the crowd, his eyes glassy with the strain of walking as his daughter and son-in-

him along between them to a box on the 1 1 he saw Daniel Frohman's ground production of The Guardsman at the New York Lyceum, but he seemed not to enjoy it much, nor could Edwina, who was too conscious of the effort it was costing her father to sit through the performance. This was the last time he was in a theater.
law almost
lifted
floor.

On April

On Tuesday, April

17,

he

woke up with

a headache.

How-

ever, he dined at the Grossmanns' and, though feeble, seemed bright and spoke in his murmurous voice of how happy he was still to be able to get out to see them. Later in his room he read himself to sleep with a volume of William Winter's poems. When Magonigle stole in next morning to wake him he was unconscious, the book lying open. He had had a brain hemora streak of rhage. His face was contorted down one side, only

374

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

the whites showed under the eyelids; his right arm and side

were paralyzed. Edwina stationed herself by his bed. Twice in the long weeks
to come her father recognized her and spoke to her distinctly; for the most part his speech was thick and wandering. He could keep down only milk at first and drank four glasses a day with

Later he grew stronger, all except his mind. When by June it looked as though he would live on indefinitely, the Grossmanns planned to move him to Narragansett, but on June 3 he had a relapse. The daily bulletin posted downstairs
relish.

read: "Mr. Booth has gradually grown weaker and there is now very little the during past twenty-four hours, left or even a partial recovery." hope EDWIN BOOTH DYING! Booth's gallant life story appeared in news columns side by side with a description, sparing nothing, of how he looked as he lay on his deathbed. Every few hours

in

The Players

another bulletin went up in The Players: "About the same." "No change." knot of reporters had taken in front of the up positions Park and passed the time talking while they waited for Dr. St. Clair Smith to wave a handkerchief from the third-floor window as the signal that all was over. All except his devoted daughter already accepted Booth's death so completely that it was hard to believe he still breathed, even though weakly; that his relaxing body gave out a warmth, however feeble; that he had human wants and a will grown more imperious for the short time left it. Yet so he had, and he indicated fretfully that the shouts and peals of summer laughter of the children playing in the Park disturbed him.

good-by. "How are you, dear Grandpa?" called little Edwin.

Edwina brought

his

grandchildren up to the bed to say

Booth was drifting off, facing out to sea, when the child's voice arrested him, and for a last moment the world he was taking leave of surged up in front of him, solid and clear, and he
called

bade boyishly:
6,

By June

face showed

"How are you yourself, old fellow?" three days after his relapse, a glance at his sunken that he had not many hours. He lay on his back,

A
his left

SCRATCH, A TEMPORARY ILL

375

rigid

arm crooked over his head and his paralyzed right arm by his side. Every few minutes his breath seemed to be

snatched away; he reached after it in drawn-out gasps. Dr. Smith and two nurses were with him. In the outer part of the room were Grossmann, Magonigle, Bispham, and Charles Carryl, who represented The Players. Edwina sat in the alcove by her father's bed. His waning presence, unseeing and unhearing, was still a companion to her, and she was grateiul for every moment
left.

During the evening a hard shower with thunder and lightthe rain had subsided, and the ning sprang up, but by midnight cool and fresh. It was after one in the morning of air was
June 7, 1893, when without warning all the lights in the buildstreet below went out. Edwina cried: "Don't let ing and on die
father die in the dark!" Then the lights flashed

on again and almost in the same mowith everyone in the room moving up swifdy to stand ment, beside his bed, Booth died. So slight was the change in him that it was "like the passing of a shadow," said Dr. Smith. The doctor held his handkerchief outside the window and shook it
gently,
serted.

and the reporters streamed

off,

leaving the street de-

Down in the grill a group of the junior actors, E. H. Sothern with three friends, was sitting around a table. They were exbehavior of the lights when they claiming loudly over the heard Magonigle say behind them: "Hush, Mr. Booth is dead."
had departed looked at in the morning a death mask was made peace again. At eight who had done the mask of Barrett. of Boom by the man Booth's tuneral was held two days later at the Little Church Around the Corner, which was crowded with theater people,

The

face

from which the

spirit

subdued and solemn. In the double line of honorary pallbearers were Aldrich, Bispham, and Furness, but the most conspicuous was Jefferson, who seemed aged and sad. All eyes rested on him and the thought in everyone's mind was: When he follows Booth the old order changes.

376

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

As Booth's coffin was being carried out of the church after the service to the sonorous "Dead March" from Episcopal Saul in this same moment by an eerie coincidence three stories of Ford's Theater in Washington, where Lincoln had been shot by John Wilkes Booth and which had since been made into government offices, collapsed with a splintering roar, killing over twenty persons. Booth's body was taken immediately to the Boston train. In York the flags of two theaters and only two, Daly's and Palmer's fluttered at half-mast as he left the city for the last time. "There goes the greatest American actor," sighed one of the profession as the cortege drove through Boston late in the afternoon. The sun was setting as a slow procession of family and friends toiled on foot up the slope inside Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. Several hundred strangers watched from a distance. Edwina and her uncle Joseph stood together as the coffin, with a spray of evergreen laid on it by Julia Ward Howe, was lowered into the grave, bringing Booth to rest beside Mary Devlin. After the clergyman finished speaking, even after the grave was filled, many in the group around it lingered, thoughtful for a moment, while the sun dropped behind the Belmont Hills.

New

Notes on Sources

DURING Edwin Booth's lifetime and just after his death several books were published that have been invaluable to his later biographers. Chief among these standard sources are Asia Booth Clarke's books about her family; William Winter's Life and Art of Edivin Booth, The Macmillan Company, 1893; and Edwina Booth Grossmann's Edwin Booth: Recollections by his daughter and letters to her and to his friends, The Century
Company,
1894.

William Winter's several volumes of reminiscences are studded with anecdotes about Booth; and in the last twenty years have appeared four up-to-date books, each with its special value. Darling of Misfortune, by Richard Lockridge, The

Century Company, 1932, is an exceedingly readable biography and covers newground. Its detailed information on the rise and fall of Booth's Theater is of immense interest. Stanley Kimmel's The Mad Booths of Maryland, Bobbs-Merrill, 1940, is an absorbing and really monumental work on the entire Booth family, providing much new material, particularly on the background and family life and relationships of the Booths, and the adventures of Edwin and Junius Jr. in California. The chapters on John Wilkes Booth are the most definitive that perhaps have yet been written about Edwin's unhappy brother. Otis Skinner's The Last Tragedian, Dodd, Mead, is interesting for the selection of Booth's own letters that it presents and for Skinner's memories of the great actor, and equally interesting is Katherine Goodale's charming reminiscential Behind the
377

378

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Scenes with Edwin Booth, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931, which brings the tragedian to life in a wonderfully vivid

way.

for facts to all these present biography is indebted indebted also to a number of persons who had sources. It is some contact with Edwin Booth in life and have contributed to the author their particular anecdotes and fresh, individual innumerable reviews and newspaper articles impressions. The consulted are not listed here; they are available to any student. Grateful thanks for access to the letters and papers of Edwin Booth, many of them never before published, are due to The of the Museum of the City of Players, the Theatre Collection York Public Library Manuscript and the York, Theatre Collections, the Harvard Theatre Collection, the

The

New

New

Princeton University Library, and the Valentine Museum of Richmond, Virginia. Special thanks goes to the distinguished actress Miss Helen Menken for permission to read her collection of Booth family letters, and thanksgoes also to Miss May Davenport Seymour, Curator of the Theatre and Music Collections of the Museum of the City of New York; to Mrs. William Seymour Marguerite McAneny, Custodian of the Theatre Collection, and Mr. Alexander Clark, Curator of to Dr. William Manuscripts, at Princeton University Library; Van Lennep and Miss Mary Reardon of the Harvard Theater Collection; to Mr. George Freedley, Librarian in Charge of the Theatre Collection, Mr. Robert W. Hill, Keeper of ManuMorrison of the Manuscript Division, scripts, and Mr. Edward York Public Library; and to Mr. Pat Carroll at The at the

New

Players.

The courtesy of Mr. Edwin Booth Grossmann, the grandson of Edwin Booth, in approving the use of certain hitherto unpublished excerpts from family letters, is most gratefully acknowledged. Acknowledgment is due to G. P. Putnam's Sons for permisfrom The Unlocked Book, a Memoir of John Wilkes Booth by his sister Asia Booth Clarke, with a Foreword by Eleanor Farjeon; and also from Ellen Terry's Memoirs. Direct quotations from The Unlocked Book include all consion to quote

379 between Asia Booth Clarke and her brother John versations Wilkes in Chapters 4, 5, 7 and 8; the gypsy's prediction to John Wilkes in Chapter 4, and in the same chapter John Wilkes' warning to Ask about her husband, "Always bear in mind you're a professional stepping-stone"; John Wilkes' description to Asia in Chapter 5 of John Brown's execution; Asia's opinion that Edwin "trembled for his own laurels" and the Southerner's exclamation overheard by her that "Our Wilkes looks like a young god!" both quoted in Chapter 7; and in Chapter 8,
Asia's realization about her brother beginning "I knew then hero was a spy, a blockade-runner, a rebel . . . ," that

NOTES ON SOURCES

my

John Wilkes' request to Asia's children to "remember me, babies, in your prayers," John S. Qarke's demand for a divorce "which would be his only salvation now," Asia's remark that her husband considered all the Booths "lagos" and "loathed their secretiveness," the letters to Asia from Edwin Booth and Effie Germon and Asia's comment on Effie Germon's letter, Edwin's denial of any connection with "Claud Burroughs," the conversations between Asia and the detective and between Asia and Mr. Hemphill, and several statements by Asia occasioned by Lincoln's assassination, beginning "If Wilkes Booth was mad ," "There is no solidity in Love . . ," and "Those who have passed through such an ordeaL . /' Material in Chapter 8 given as from the pen of Charles Warwick has also been quoted from The Unlocked Book. From Ellen Terry's Memoirs have been quoted direcdy all descriptive comments by Miss Terry on Edwin Booth and on Henry Irving, which appear in Chapters n, 12 and 15. Otis Skinner, Material from Footlights and Spotlights, by^
.
.

copyright 1924, 195 1, is used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. It includes Skinner's description in Chapter 9 of Booth's Othello as being human,
the poetic and lovely, "very much like Booth himself'; also incident in Chapter 10 or Booth's burning the contents of John Wilkes' trunk, which was originally torn to Otis Skinner by Garrie Davidson. The version of the incident given in this from Davidson's account in Footlights book has been

adapted

and

Spotlights,

and

all

conversation occurring in

it is

quoted

380

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

directly from Footlights and Spotlights. The incident in Chapter 15 of Skinner's accidentally striking Booth on the head during Macbeth has also been adapted from Otis Skinner's ac-

count in Footlights and Spotlights. From Mad Folk of the Theatre, by Otis Skinner, copyright 1928, and used by special permission of the publishers, The
Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., are taken the anecdote in Chapter i of Junius Brutus Booth begging his audience to "shut up," the God damnedest and promising it "in ten minutes Lear you ever saw in your lives," and the excerpt quoted in Chapter i from Mr. Booth's letter to a friend beginning "Your loving communication has been just delivered," and ending ". . Steamboat about to go." Mrs. Katherine Goodale (Kitty Molony) has graciously given permission for quotations from Behind the Scenes with Edwin Booth. The description in Chapter 14 of Booth's tour in 1886-1887 with the "David Garrick" company owes much to Mrs. Goodale's first-hand account. All conversations involving Kitty Molony and members of the David Garrick company are quoted directly from Mrs. Goodale's book. The explanation in Chapter 10 of how Booth grew seven feet tall when he delivered the Curse of Rome, and the episode in Chapter 1 3 of the American woman in Germany who shied off from kissing Booth, were originally described in Behind the Scenes with Edwin Booth. Mrs. Goodale's book is also the source of Booth's exclamation in Chapter 1 1 about his near escape from Mark Gray's bullet "My caul saved me! Second sight premonition warning! ." All statements by Edward H. House and excerpts from cor. . . . . .

respondence between House and Edwin Booth, as well as all remarks by Charles Reade and excerpts from a reminiscential conversation between Reade and Booth, are quoted from "Edwin Booth in London," by E. H. House, from Century Magazine, copyright 1897, Century Company, and are reprinted by permission of Appleton-Century-Croifts, Inc. This material is found in Chapter 12. The account in Chapter 4 of Booth's first meeting with Mary Devlin and of the complication in their when she
courtship

NOTES ON SOURCES

381

almost became engaged to another man is based on the article by Anne M. Fauntleroy, "The Romance of Mary Devlin Booth," Ladies' Home Journal, September, 1904. Booth's words written to his mother that he had seen and acted with a young

woman who much impressed

him, and Mary's confession that she "was inspired" and could "act forever" with Booth and later that they were "all in all to each other," are directly from this article and are reprinted by special permission of the Ladies' Home Journal, copyright 1932, The Curtis Publishing

quoted

Company.

Miss Mildred Howells and Mr. John Mead Howells have to quote in Chapter 9 from William Dean sren kind permission g" owells' Literary Friends and Acquaintance, Harper, 1900, in retelling the famous "It's Lincoln's hand!" story, involving

Booth and James Lorimer Graham.

Otis Skinner's description in Chapter 1 1 of Booth and his second wife backstage, beginning "She would attend to all the robing and make-up , . . ," is reprinted by permission of

Dodd, Mead
Inc.

& Company

Otis Skinner, copyright 1939,

from The Last Tragedian, by by Dodd, Mead & Company,

Grateful acknowledgment is made of permission by the respective publishers to quote from the following other sources: The Cowells in America, edited by M. Willson Disher, Oxford University Press, 1934, for Mrs. Sam Cowell's description in Chapter 5 of seeing Booth as Brutus and Petruchio.

Vagrant Memories, by William Winter, The George H. 1915, for the anecdote in Chapter 2 about Brutus Booth diving under the bed to escape from Junius Thomas R. Gould, for the anecdote in Chapter 8 of John McCullough telling Edwin Forrest that John Wilkes Booth was supposed to have shot Lincoln, for Booth's words to a clergyman in Chapter 10, "There is no door in my theater through which God cannot see," and for Booth's words to Winter in Chapter 16, "Here is my bed, and hare is the fire, and here are my books, and here you come to see me. I suppose I

Doran Company,

shall

wear out

here."

Autobiographical Sketch of Mrs. John Drew, Scribner's,

382
1

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Drew's comments in Chapter i on Junius Brutus Booth when he crowed like a rooster during Hamlet. The Melancholy Tale o] Me} by Edward H. Sothern, of Booth's Hamlet for Sothern's Scribner's,
899, for Mrs.
1916, description shone like a in Chapter beginning "His genius "

good

deed

Francis Wilson, Scribner's, 1906, for Booth in Chapter 4 beginning Jefferson's description of young "There was a gentleness and sweetness of manner in him . ." instructions to Mary Devlin in the same and for

Joseph Jefferson,

by

Jefferson's

rehearse Juliet to the Romeo of a new and rising tragedian," for Jefferson's statement to The Players after Booth's death quoted in Chapter 15 that "It was not his wealth only, but it was himself that he account in Chapter 16 of how Booth gave," and for Jefferson's health to the desolate landscape as his own
chapter,

"Tomorrow, Mary,

you'll

failing compared they strolled on the beach

Monthly Magazine, January,

1898, for Hutton's description in Chapter 10 of standing in the wing watching Booth act Richelieu, for several excerpts from Booth's letters to Hutton announcement quoted in Chapter 12, for Manager Bromley's
at the

"A Group of Players," by Laurence Hutton, Harper's New

at Buzzards Bay.

"Mr. Barrett has gone" and Booth's query "Where to?" quoted end of Chapter 15, for Booth's instructions in Chapter 16 to an errand boy to "take [Barrett's death mask] upstairs and

unwrap it," and for Booth's explanation in Chapter 16 would have liked to have the rep-covered chair in the
"for Mollie's sake."

that he

picture

Him," by Edwin Milton Royle, Harper's Magazine, May, 1916, for Booth's comment on Robert Browning's affectation, his conversation with Tennyson, and

"Edwin Booth

as I

Knew

Mrs. Florence Irving's letter to him, all quoted in Chapter 12, for Booth's exclamation .on the German Prince Karl's death quoted in Chapter 1 3, and for the exhortation to the audience by one of Booth's admirers quoted in Chapter 15 beginning "That's right, call him out again! . . ."
Family Circle,

by

Cornelia Otis Skinner,

Houghton

Mifflin

NOTES ON SOURCES
Company,
1 1

383

1948, for Booth's advice to Otis Skinner in Chapter

.

beginning "Young man, Fve been watching you and you're

.

killing yourself .

."

Reminiscences of a Dramatic

Critic,

by Henry Austin Qapp,

Houghton

Mifflin

in Chapter

Company, 1902, for the description of Booth as being "crude with the promise-crammed
. .
.

," and for Charles Fechter's confusion of "whet" and "wet" quoted in Chapter 10. Reminiscences, by Julia Ward Howe, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1899, for Booth's words to Mrs. Howe in Chapter 4 about "little Mary Devlin" in "several heavy parts," for Mrs.

crudity of genius

Howe's

description in Chapter 4 of Booth's and Mary Devlin's performance together in Romeo arid Juliet beginning "Few who saw it will ever forget it ... ," and for her description

Booth following the casket at Mary's funeral. Wilkes Booth, by Francis Wilson, Houghton Mifflin John Company, 1929, for the line from Booth's letter to Junius in Chapter 4, "I don't think John will startle the world, but he is improving fast and looks beautiful," for John Wilkes' warning to John S. Clarke in Chapter 7 beginning "Never again, if you value your life, speak to me so ," and for Colonel Conger's in Chapter 8 of John Wilkes trapped in the burning description
in Chapter 6 of
.

barn.

Francis Wilson's Life of Himself, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924, for the discussion in Chapter 14 between Booth and Lawrence Barrett on the leadership of their profession, for Booth's reminiscence to Wilson in Chapter 15 beginning "7
." and his rueful used to enjoy acting comedy explanation of why he had not signed his photograph for Wilson, for the quotation in Chapter 16 of Booth's several remarks to Wilson about not being able to "go anywhere in the house without bumping into a Booth," "For God's sake, don't leave me," "You make me think I'm still of the present" and finally for
. .

J.

M. Barrie's comment on seeing Mary Devlin's picture at The

Players:

"A verra byutiful face."

made of Crowding Memories, by Special mention should be Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Lilian Woodman), Houghton

384
Mifflin

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

Company, 1920. On Mrs. Aldrich's unique account is based the description in Chapters 5 and 6 of the Woodman sisters' first meeting and subsequent intimacy with the Booths. All conversation and correspondence that involves both the Woodmans and the Booths is quoted directly from this book, as are also Mary Devlin's exclamation at the theater, "Oh, I've said the wrong line and Edwin is saying it"; her request to her maid to "take me upstairs and put me to bed, I feel as if I should never be warm again"; Mrs. Stoddard's letter to Mary about Booth's drinking and Mary's reply to Mrs. Stoddard; the telegram from Dr. Miller to the stage manager at the Winter Garden; the words quoted in Chapter 8 of Booth's Negro
dresser beginning "Oh, Massa Edwin, the President has been shot . ," Mrs. Booth's prayer after hearing of John Wilkes Booth's crime, "O God, if this be true, let him not live to be hanged," and Launt Thompson's words to Mrs. Booth when he escorted her to the Philadelphia train beginning "You will need
.
.

now all your courage."

Booth walking down Park Street and of Booth's and Salvini's acting in Othello, quoted in Chapter 14.
in Camden, Volume I, by Horace and Company, 1906, for Whitman's Traubel, Small, Maynard thoughts on Booth in Chapter 1 1 beginning "Edwin had every-

Acknowledgment of brief quotation is also made to the authors and publishers of the following sources: Edwin Booth, by Charles Townsend Copeland, Small, Maynard and Company, 1901, for Copeland's descriptions of

With Walt Whitman

thing but guts. . . ." "Edwin Booth's Opinion of the Players of His Day," by Edgar Beecher Bronson, Theatre Magazine, May, 1910, for Booth's letter to Robertson about trying "strong names" quoted
in

Chapter
.
.

10

and beginning "...

all

these

half-baked

stars.

."

Shakespeare on the Stage, by William Winter, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1911, for Edwin Forrest's acid comments on the performances of Booth and Cushman in Macbeth quoted in Chapter 5, and for Booth's statement to Winter in Chapter 8

NOTES ON SOURCES
beginning "All

385

life I have thought of dreadful things that to me. . . ." might happen Shakespeare on the Stage, Second Series, by William Winter, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1915, for Winter's description of Booth as King Lear quoted in Chapter 1 1 and "I re-

my

member him
get.
. .

indeed,

who

beginning

that

saw him could ever

for-

."

Other Days, by William Winter, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1908, for Booth's words "It is the last recall" spoken at John Brougham's grave and quoted in Chapter n, and for Barrett's admission "I can't go on" during his last performance, and his warning in his last ifiness beginning "Don't come near . me, Edwin ," both quoted in Chapter 15.
.
.

Life and Art of Richard Mansfield, by William Winter, Moffat, Yard and Company, 1910, for Booth's comment to Winter that Irving's Hamlet had "rather a lot of red silk pocket handkerchief in it," and Irving's verdict that Booth was "a

magnificent reader," both quoted in Chapter

12.

"Two

Great Othellos," by Clara Morris, Munsey's Maga-

zine,

November, 1909, for Clara Morris' description of Salvini's Othello in Chapter 10. Life on the Stage, by Clara Morris, McClure, Phillips and

Company, 1901, for Mr. Ellsler's opinion quoted in Chapter 5 that John Wilkes "has more of the old man's power in one performance than Edwin can show in a year . . . ," for John Wilkes' famous comment quoted in Chapter 7 that Edwin "&
Hamlet, melancholy and afl," and for Clara Morris' statement about John Wilkes after the assassination quoted in Chapter 8

and beginning "He was so young, so bright, so gay. Julia Ward Howe, by Laura E. Richards and Maud
. .

."

Howe

Elliott,

Houghton

Mifflui

Simmer's assertion "I have outlived my interest in individuals" and Mrs. Howe's comment that "fortunately God Almighty had not . got so far," quoted in Chapter 6. "The Eloquence of Silence," by Julia Marlowe, Green Book Magazine, March, 1913, for Julia Marlowe's description of seeing Booth as lago quoted in Chapter 12.
.
.

Company,

1916, for Senator Charles

386

PRINCE OF PLAYERS

"Edwin Booth in Old California Days," The Green Book Album, June, 1911, for J. J. McGoskey's reminiscences about

Edwin Booth in Chapter 3 and the elder Booth's angry instructions to Edwin during their first rehearsal in San Francisco.

"A

Conversation with Joseph Haworth," Arena, January,

Houghton
Trip!"

1901, for Booth's remark to Haworth in Chapter 15 beginning "I could act then, had all the enthusiasm of youth. . . ." The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, by Ferris Greenslet, Mifflin 1908, for Aldrich's joke to Booth

in Chapter 14: "Hello,

Company, Ned! Going hunting?

Pll lend

you

"Edwin Booth and Ole Bull," by R. Ogden Doremus,

. .

Critic,

March, 1906, for Mary McVicker's protest beginning "Please ." quoted in Chapter 9. don't ask Edwin to read Manfred Sketches of Tudor Hall and the Booth Family, by Ella V. Mahoney, Tudor Hall, May, 1925, for the remark attributed to John "Wilkes in Chapter 8 beginning: "If I hadn't been very ," and for the courageous, I'd have given up right there . old Baltimore woman's exclamation "How beautiful was Asia! How handsome John Wilkes Booth! " quoted in Chapter 1 1 The request for tickets from Boston Corbett to Edwin Booth, from which a line is quoted in Chapter 1 1, is in the
. .
.

possession of The Peale Museum, Baltimore, Maryland. The diary of John Wilkes Booth and the letters from Mrs. Mary Ann Booth to John Wilkes, from which quotation is made in
are in the possession of the Judge Advocate GenerWashington, D.C., and are quoted with the permission of that Office.

Chapter

8,

al's

Office,

Index

of Music, York, 243, 3*i 3*3 Acres, Bob, Jefferson role, 252 Adams, Edwin, 222, 228, 232-233, 237

Academy

New

Adelphi Theater, London, 298, 299 Adventures of Humpty-Dumpty in Every Clime, The, 252
Agassiz, Louis, 126, 199

Aladdin, or The Wonderful Lamp, 197-198

Arena, 386 of the Potomac, 119 Arnold, Benedict, 175 Arnold, Sam, 175, 188 Arsenal, Washington, D.C, 200 Arthur, Chester, 328 Assassination, attempted, of Edwin Booth, 260-262 Assassination, of Lincoln, 173-201,

Army

Albany, 123, 187, 297 Albion theater, Boston, 34 Alcott, Louisa May, 87, 126
Aldrich,

223, 363 Atlantic Monthly, 96, 126, 132 Atzerodt, George A., 175, 188, 200 Australia, 69-70, 145

Thomas Bailey, 126, 127, 136, 137, 189-190, 200, 319, 321,

Autobiographical

Sketch

of

Mrs.

John Drew, 381-382

Badeau,

334 350 375. 38* Aldrich, Mrs. Thomas Bailey, 383384; see also Woodman, Lilian Alexander, Russian Emperor, 8 American FireTnan, The, 66 American Theater, 56 Ames, Oakes, 250 Amsterdam, 8, 10

Adam,
109,

92-94, 09,

101-103,

108,

in,

118,

no,

123,

125, 142, 147-148, 156-158, 171, 184, 199, 221, 257, 293-294, 356, 37 2

Anderson, Dave,

58, 62, 65, 69-70, 72, 75, 83, 109, 217, 254-255, 263, 264, 272-273, 288, 296-300, 303,

Baker, Ben, 75, 81, 83-84, 89-90, 94 Baker, Luther, 192-193, 104 Baker, Mrs., 326-327, 329, 330 Baldwin Theater, 331 Baltimore, 3, 6, 13, 15, 19, 28, 46, 62,
69, 80, 94, 102, 123, 124, 191, 214, 215, 216, 223, 291, 339,

Anderson, Mrs. Dave, Andr6, Major, 175

311, 314, 321, 362 318, 321, 365

343

35*

354 3^6
in, 29, 62,

Antony, Mark

Annapolis, 20

Booth home

79

(Julius Caesar), 164,

*33> 237 Apostate, The, 6, 43, 123, 213 Arch Street Theater, Philadelphia,

Booth's appearances in, 4041, 48, 81, 213, 328 Bangs, Frank, 237, 238 Bankruptcy, Booth's, 244, 249-250,
292

Edwin

387

388

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Booth, Adelaide (first wife of Junius Brutus Booth), 8-10, 17, 21, 47

Borneo, T. J., 244, 245, 249 Barnum's Hotel, Baltimore, 214 Barrett, Lawrence, 90, 117, 136, 228,
232-239,
260,

263,

266-267,
3<fc,

271, 274, 298, 3J7-359*

3*7>

Booth, Agnes (Perry), 256, 311 Booth, Algernon Sydney, 6-7 Booth, Asia, 4, 6, 21, 26-28, 46, 47,
72, 73, 79, 80, 97, loo, 101; see also Clarke, Asia Booth

375

tour with Booth, 334-343* 354-35$ Barrie, J. M., 366, 383 Barren, Charlie, 326 Barry (manager of the Boston Theater), 87,89 Barrymore, Ethel, 252 Barrymore, John, 252, 364 Barrymore, Lionel, 252 Barrymore, Maurice, 252, 311, 364 Barstow, Wilson, 145 Bartol,Dr^ 319 Bateman, H. L., 235, 258, 330 Bateman, Isabel, 258

Booth, Blanche

De

Bar, 48, 184, 188,

189, 256, 311

Booth, Clementine
7 1*

De

Bar, 28, 48,

3"

Booth, Edgar, 227, 250 Booth, Edwin, birth of, 26-27 death and funeral of, 375-376
first

appearance in theater, 40-41

marriages, 96-97, 224

style in acting, 98, 113-114, 2162I 7
.

Hymn of the Republic," 131 Bay City, 3*5, 3*9 Beecher, Dr. Henry, 133 Behind the Scenes with Edwin
"Battle

voice, xi-xii, 91, 150, 166-169, 257, 352

Booth, Edwina, 125, 133, 140, 143,

147, 150, 158-160, 170, 171, 189,

201, 250,

208, 253,

Booth (Goodale),

377, 380

224, 226, 238, 249267, 268, 272, 276,

Belair, 4, 43, 272 Belasco, David, 255, 359-3&> 3*5 Bell, Clark, 244 Bella Union, San Francisco, 55 Bells, The, 235, 279, 312

278, 283, 288, 292-293, 294-295.,

297-298, 310, 311, 3x3, 315, 317, 318; see also Grossman, Ed-

wina Booth
birth of, 121, 122, 149

Benedick (Much Ado Nothing), 68, 115

Benedict, E.

About

engagement to Vaux, 297, 300,

310

304,

C,

334

Berlin, 300-304 Bernhardt, Sarah, 252, 268, 290

Bertram, 57, 86 Bertuccio (The Poofs Revenge), 158 Betterton, Thomas, 9, 220, 320 Bibliographical notes, 377-386
Bierstadt, Albert, 127 Billing, of Edwin Booth, 40, 42, 85, 89-90, 163, 228, 232,

marriage, 315-316 Booth, Elizabeth, 4, 18 Booth, Frederick, 4, 18 Booth, Harriet (Mace), 48-49, 5355 58, 65, 71, 160, 311

84239

Booth, Booth, Booth, Booth,

Henry Byron,
Jane, 7, 22

4, 21, 27, 223

John, 6

John Wilkes,

4,

26,

27,

31,

72, 79-81, 94-95,

100-101, 108,
253, 259,

Birmingham, 300 Bispham, William, 200-201,

242,

119, 123-124, 135, 137-138, 141,

214, 227,
283,

155-156,

213-214,
3<$5

244-245,
354*
3<$8,

271,

287,

*9* *97> 339>

37<$,

377

37-

289, 293, 296, 305, 323, 334, 337,

35

37*

375

Black Crook, The, 208

Bias,

Blanchard, E. L., 276 Ruy, 314

379 ., . acting ability, 123-124, 135, 156, 170 appearances with Edwin, 94-95, 163-166 assassination of Lincoln, 173-201

INDEX
Civil

389
183, 184, 188, 189, 197, 200, 201, 223, 236-237, 243, 256, 310-

War

end, 119, 123-124, 155-

156, 160-166

costumes burned, 241-242 death and burial of, 194-195, 200,

214, 222-223, 319 desire for fame, 80, 124, 164, 191,

3"
appearances with Edwin, 163-165, 236-237 Booth, Junius, IE, 311 Booth, Marion, 71, 160, 188, 263,
311

206

popularity

with

women,

94-95,

187-188, 197

search and capture, 190-201, 213214 Booth, Joseph Adrian, 4, 26, 28, 100,
108,

Booth, Booth,

Mary Ann, 4, 18, 198 Mary Ann (Holmes),

lo-ix,

13-18, 21, 30, 47, 62-63, 71, 79, 80-82, 100-101, 108, 119, 141,
147,
183,

119,

175,

200, 259,

201, 291,

212,
293,

151,
185,

164, 188,

165,

176,

182,

223,

234,

256,

310, 316, 318, 343, 376

Booth, Junius Brutus, 3-49, 100-101, 211, 214-216, 218, 252, 257, 278279, 31973^0, 324, 342 acting technique, 31-38, 43-44, 46, 123-124 birth and early life of, 6-n

194-196, 20O, 201, 2O8, 2I4-2I6, 223224, 259, 26l, 273, 291, 311, 316, 3 86
191,

death of, 318-319

Booth,

Mary Devlin
1

(first

wife of
115,

Edwin), 94-100, 107-111,

117-118, 120,
227,

21-122, 124-128,

death and burial

103, 223

of,

~ 60-63, IO2

I20-I5I, 155, 184, 211, 213, 221, 231, 250, 256, 268, 208,

215 of madness, 1721, 22, 23-25, 31, 36-40, 46, 49, 216, 324 Edwin compared with, 67-68, 8182, 85-86, 90-91, 164, 171, 278-

divorce, 47,

z 88,

drinking and

fits

306, 340, 366-367, 376, 380-381, 383; see also Devlin, Mary

in Boston, 129-140

death of, 140-141 Booth, Mary McVicker (second wife of Edwin), 224, 226-227,
250-251, 264-267,
282,

279
in Maryland, see Booth farm fondness for animals, 16-17, 22-23

253-254,
272,

256,

261,

farm

275,

277,

278,

John Wilkes compared with, 123124

287-289, 291-292, 294206; see also McVicker, Mary Booth, Richard, 6, 7, 14, 18, 22, 28,
45, 215, 223

Edwin, 41joint appearances 44i5<$ marriages, 8-n, 13-14, 16, 47-48

.

with

Boom, Richard Jumus,

30, 47, 215, 343

10, 17, 18, 21,

memoir

of,

written

by Ask Booth,

Booth, Rosalie,
164, 183,

4,

28, 63,

100, 151,

214-216

197,

223-224,

291,

monument
papers and

to, 102-103 letters of, 100-101

311, 316, 318, 343

relationship with Edwin, 26-49, I59 r statue of, 220 to California, 49, 53-57, 112 trip to England, 17, 21
trips

Booth, Junius Brutus,

Jr., 4, 14,

27-

Booth, Sydney, 311 * Booth-Barrett tour, 334~343> 354-S5 6 Boothden, 310-317, 324, 340 Booth farm, 3-6, 14-17, 21, 27-28, 77, 70-80, 100-102, 186, 215216, 223, 259 Booth's Theater, 227, 230-238, 242246,

29, 39, 40, 48-^9, 53-^78, 79, 81, 95, 109, 119, 124, 160, 171, 176,

250,

252,

258,

264,

268,

282, 292, 311, 377

390

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
^-AA

Booth's Theater (continued)

building of, 212-213, 218-219, 243-

dosing of, 311 opening of, 219-222

Boston, 48, 81, 84-85

Edwin Booth
185,

in,

85-89,
171, 174,

94-97,

no, 129-145,
242, 256,

182-

263,
in,

295-297,
135,
155,

Burbage, Richard, 9, 363 Burroughs, Claud, 197, 379 Burton, William, 89-90, 92 Butler, M. F., 76-77 9 Buy-it-Dearf Tis made of Cash68 mere, Buzzards Bay, 330, 361 Byron, George Gordon, n, 21, 112, 224
Cain, Mystery (Byron), 112 Calhoun, Lucia, 168, 217 California, 165-166, 179, 218, 273,
306, 311, 319, 326, 330, 345

30o-3i4 319-321, 328, 351, 376

John Wilkes Booth

177

Junius Brutus Booth in, 19, 34, 38, 40 Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 85, 86, 88, 134, 135, 312 Boston Gazette, 314 Boston Herald, 295 Boston Home Journal, 322

Edwin Booth

in, 49, 53-69, 71-78,

83, 88, 145, 254-256, 263, 266,

268, 274, 386 Junius Brutus Booth in, 49, 53-57 California Theater, 254

Boston Museum,

41, 72, 85, 89, 135,

Cambridge,

xi,

141, 146, 158

141, 184, 232, 340

Boston Theater,

85, 87, 89, 94, 95,

Camttle, 87, 98, 252 Canada, 191, 213

133, 174, 182, 221, 328

Cape Hatteras

lighthouse, 14

Boucicault, Dion, 367 Bowers, Mrs. D. P., 217 Bozenta, Count, 347 Bremen, 305
Brightlingsea, 311

Capen, Nahum, 291

Cardinal (Richelieu), see Richelieu Carroll, Pat, 378 Carryl, Charles, 375 Cary, Emma, 170, 172, 198, 200 Cary, Richard, 107, 114, 117-118,

Broadway Theater, 347~3^ 355 359 Brodribb, John Henry, see Henry
Irving

no,

122,

123,

124,

126,

146,

158, 170

Bromley, Tneodore, 357, 358, 361 Bronson, Edgar Beecher, 384 Brooklyn Academy of Music, 359 Brooklyn Eagle, 113, 359-360

Gary, Mrs. Richard, 157,

162,

170,

Brougham, John, 266, 385 Brown, John, 119, 163 Browne, Junius Henri, 295 Browning, Robert, 272, 378 Brownsmith, Jones Robinson
Toddlekins), 87
Brussels, 8, 21

172 Cassio (Othello), 42, 322 Cassius (Julius Caesar), 233, 355 Barrett, Lawrence, 236, 355

(Little

Booth, Edwin, 237 Booth, Junius Brutus, 19, 43 Booth, Junius Brutus, Jr., 165, 236^237
Caul,

163-

Edwin Booth born

Cliff,

with, 26,

54, 70, 73, 76, 119, 251, 261

Brutus (Julius Caesar), 43, 237, 355

Cedar

Cos Cob,

249, 250

Edwin Booth

as, 87, 114,

163-166,

233. 236, 230, 355 'Brutus (Payne), 43-44, 210, 329

Central Park, 163, 238, 297 Century, 217, 380 Century dub, in, 126

Buckingham, doorkeeper, 179-180

Buckstone,
J.

Chambers, Mrs M 215

Bn

120

Bull Run, battle of, 119, 157

Chapman, Caroline, Chapman, William,

55, 56, 65, 67, 73 55, 56, 65, 67,

68

INDEX
Charleston, South Carolina, 12, 2324, 105, 119 Charles Town, Virginia, 119

391

Conger, Everton, 192, 193-195 Conversation with Joseph Hawortb,

^,386
Conway, William, 23-24 Cooke, George Frederick,
320
9, 31, 220,

Chase, Arthur, 325, 329, 331, 332 Chattanooga, 161, 253 Chenoweth, J. S. (ship), 60-61

Chicago, 124, 191, 213, 292, 293, 327

Edwin Booth
33<*i

in, 84, 213, 259, 334,

35*
of, 161

Chickamauga, battle

Chippendale, Mr., 121 Choate, Rufus, 42, 62 Cibber, Colley, 9, 40

Cincinnati, 60, 62, 183, 229 Civil War, 119-124, 155-156,
166,

Copeland, Charles Townsend, 309310, 319, 322, 384 Coquelin, am$, 268 Coroett, Boston, 194, 253, 386 Corrilla, Joaquin, 66 Corsican Brothers, The, 75

Cos Cob, 249, 250 Costumes, 84, 100-102, 211, 241-242,

160-

172-174 Clapp, Henry Austin, 88, 383 Clark, Alexander, 378 Clarke, Ask Booth, 100-101, 108, 119,
155,

Covent Garden Theatre, 9, 10, 220 Cowell, Mrs. Sam, 114-115, 235, 381
Cowell, Sidney, 114, 235

Cowelk

in America,

The

(Disher),

162-163,

165,

171,

183,

381

186, 195-198, 201, 188-189, 214, 258-259, 260-261, 263, 265,

Cox, Dandy, 66
Crabtree, Lotta, 76, 233 Creswick, William, 237 Crinkle, Nym, 169, 336, 354-355
Critic, Critic,

273,

283,

287-288,

291,

293,

318, 338, 377

378-379;

* *k

Booth, Asia hostility towards Alary Devlin Booth, 97, 108, 141, 155 memoir of her father, 214-216, 273 statements on John Wilkes Booth,
1

386

The, 64 and criticism Critics

of

Edwin

Booth, 86-93, 99, *45> *57t **9271, 273-274, 209, 302-303, 335, 35I-35 2 * 359-3<*i

19, 156, 160-163, 174-176, 178,

188-189, 339, 378-379 Clarke, Edwin Booth, 338 Clarke, James Freeman, 22-23 Clarke, John Sleeper, 42-43, 72, 80, 100, 115, 141, 160-162, 183, 1 88,

Crookback, Richard, 5

Crowding Memories (Aldrich),

Curse of

383

speech (Richelieu), 228-229, 380

94, 96, 115-116,

Rome

Cushman, Charlotte,

196-107, 211, 214, 234-235, 259261, 273, 339, 379 Cleveland, Grover, 361

Cleveland, Ohio, 124, 327 and the Hearth, Cloister

Daily Alta California, 67 Daly, Augustin, 251-252, 336, 337,

The
Daly, Jc

(Reade), 276 Cockeysville, 80

Damon and

Pythias, 2x9

Coghlan, Rose, 337

Cohasset, 317, 358 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 322 Collyer, Robert, 293 Columbia, California, 76 Comedie Frangaise, 268

Damrosch, Walter, 338

Darling of Misfortune (Lockridge), 377 E. L., 238-239 Davenport, "David Garrick" company, 325332, 380 Davidson, Carrie, 234, 241-242, 380

Confederate Army, 172, 173, 175

39*

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Durant, Dr. Ghislani, 262, 266 Duse, Eleanora, 371

Davis, Jefferson, 161 Davis, Richard Harding, 363 De Bar, Clementine, see

Booth,

Clementine

De Bar

Edgar (King Lear),

Edison,

43, 321

Deery, Jack, 178 Delannoy, Adelaide, 8-10, 17, 21, 47 8 Delannoy, Madame, Delmomco's, 266-267, 299, 340 Democratic State Journal, 73, 75

Thomas

A., 352

Edmonds, John Worth, 147 Edmonds, Laura, 147, 198

Edwma

(yacht), 311

Desdemona

(Othello), 280-281, 285,

352 Devlin, Mary, 82-^3, 89, 94, 95-99, 107, 366-367; see also Booth,

^ .331 Detroit,

Edwin Booth (Copeland), 384 Edwin Booth (Grossman), 377 Edwin Booth and Ole Bull (Doremus), 386

Edwin Booth

as

Knew Him

Mary Devlin
Devrient, Ludwig, 304 Diamond Springs, 76 Dickens, Charles, 250, 339 Dilkes, S. Levin, 234

(Royle), 387 Edwin Booth in London (House), 380

in Old California Days (Mcdoskey), 386 Edwin Booth 9f Opinion of the Players of His Day (Bron-

Edwin Booth

Disher,M. Wilson, 381 Dombey and Son, 68 Don Caesar de Kazan, 329, 373
Dorchester,
131,

133-136,

139-141,
224,

son), 384 Eldridge, Louisa, 297 Elgin, 260

146, 147, 171, 311, 351

Doremus, Dr. R. Ogden,

386

Downieville, 59, 76 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 334 Dramatic Mirror, 336, 341 Dramatic New, 293 Dresden, 305 Drew, Georgiana, 252 Drew, John, 252, 336, 364 Drew, Mrs. John, 19-20, 381-382 Drew, Louisa Lane, 252 Drinking, Edwin Booth's bouts with,
70, 72, 73, 75, 89, 90, 93, 96-97,

385 Mr., 124 EUsler, Mrs., 95 Eloquence of Silence, The lowe), 385 Elmira, 336
Ellsler,

Elliott,

Maud Howe,

(Mar-

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 23 England, 17, 21, 121-122, 211, 258, 259, 263, 266, 268-289, 297, 299300, 305, 316

Europe,

trips

to,

8i f 118-122,

258,

268-289, 297-306

127-128, 130-131, 136-140, 145146, 149, 156, 188, 229, 266267, 272, 292-293, 299, 323-324,

Everard, Marie, 254 Ewer, Ferdinand, 67, 68, 256, 257,

3"
Eytinge, Rose, 206, 207
Fairchfld, John, 66 Family Circle (Skinner), 382-383 Farjeon, Benjamin, 339

329

Dmmmond,
283

Drury Lane Theatre,

Duchadet,
Raphael

"Polly," 218 9-10, 220, 280,

(The Marble

Farjeon, Eleanor, 378-379

Heart), 73-74 Duchess, or The Unnatural Father,

rv,

Faunderoy, Anne M., 381

Fechter, Charles, 225, 271, 383 Federal Street Theater, 123 Felton, Cornelius, 126
Felton, Mrs. Cornelius, 123, 158

Dugas, Louis, 29 Dumb Belle, The, 46

INDEX
Field,

393

Ferguson R. M., 318 Fields, James T., 132

148

(actor), 181

Gilbert, John, 337 Gflfert, Charles, 11

Gillette,

Fifth

Avenue Hotel,

William, 249

108-111,

131,

Givemsum (Buy-h-Dear!

T& made

Fifth

Avenue Theater, 251, 252 Fine Arts, 236

of Cashmere), 68 Gladstone, Herbert, 275, 312 Godwin, Parke, 161-162

Fiske, Mrs., 312

Fitzgerald, Percy, 284

Golden Age, 77 Gooch, Walter,

278

263, 269, 274, 277-

Flohr, Henry, 292 Florence, William, 337

Flynn,

Tom,

10, 20, 23-24,

26

Footlights

Poors Revenge, The, 158, 273 and Spotlights (Skinner),

Goodale, Katherine, 377, 380; see also Molony, Kitty Gottschalk, Ferdinand, 337 Gould, Thomas, 34, 126, 220 Graham, James Lorimer, 207, 381

Ford, Harry, 178 Ford, John T., 184, 186, 188, 253, 254 Ford's Theater, 174, 177, 178, 179,
182, 185-186, 198, 323, 376 Forrest, Edwin, 26, 31, 33-34, 68, 87, 122, 111-114, 116-117, 157, 160,

Gramercy Park,
Grant,
Ulysses
179*

340-341, 345, 346,

S.,

162,

173,

178-

"4

Grass Valley, 59, 76 Gratiano (The Merchant of Venice), 43

182,

218-220,

237-238,

257, 355

Forrest Theater, 73, 77

Gray, Mark, 260-261 Greeley, Horace, 91

Fort Sumter,

fall of, 1 19 Foster, Mrs., 329, 330

Fournier, Marie, 122, 133, 140

Green Book Album, The, 386 Green Book Magazine, 385 Greenmount Cemetery, 223-224,
338, 343

319,

Fox, George L., 226, 252 France, 122, 192, 268, 306, 351 Franchi, Fabian and Louis del (The Corsican Brothers), 75 Francis Wilson's Ufe of Himself,
383

Greenslet, Ferris, 386

Grossmann, Edwin Booth,

374 378

333, 361,

Grossmann, Edwina Booth, 320-321,

324, 340,

328,

330,

331,

333,

335, 354*

Freedley, George, 378 Frohman, Daniel, 373

34*,

344.
3<*5i

34*,

35*.

355

3* 1 *

3*8-377
333,

Front Street theater, 81 Fulham, England, 121 Furibond (The Yellow Dwarf), 66 Furness, Dr. Horace, 209, 316, 375
Gallia, 267, 289

Grossmann, Ignatius, 315-316,

340, 361, 3<$9-37

373-374 Grossmann, Maurice, 315 Grossmann, Mildred, 321, 327, 361 (Hutton), 382 Group of Players, Grover's Theater, 198

Game,

Elizabeth, 7 Garfield, James A-, 290-291

Guardsman, The, 373

Guy Mannermg,
in,

66

Garrick, David,

9,

32, 68, 92,

169, 220, 299, 320

Georgetown, 76

Germany,
349

288,

299,

300-306,

310,

Hale, Bessie, 176, 189, 195 Hale, John Parker, 176 Hamburg, 304-305

Hamlet, role of:

197-198, 379

Germon, Effie,

Boom, Edwin,

xkrii, 56, 67, 72,

394

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
81, 82, 84, 88, 92, 95, 96, li i, 113, 119, 136, 157,

Hamlet (continued)

no1

Howe, Howe,

Florence, 145, 150

Julia

Ward,
133,

86, 88-89,

66-

131-132,

141,

145,

199-

171,

205,

208,

213,

246, 252, 257, 306, 301-303, 269-270, 285, 314, 321-322, 330-331, 337-338 350, 359-3*1. 366 Booth, Junius Brutus, 19, 21, 24 Fechter, Charles, 225 Forrest, Edwin, 113-114, 157, 301 Irving, Henry, 258, 269-289, 314

225, 245258, 261, 267,

200, 310, 313, 376, 383, 385

86, 145, 310 Howells, John Mead, 381 Howells, Mildred, 381 Howells, William Dean, 207, 381

Howe, Maud, 132 Howe, Dr. Samuel,

Hugo, Victor,

23

Huntington, Dr., 141 Hutton, Laurence, 229, 265, 266, 270,

275, 276, 283, 291-294, 297, 299,

Ludwig, 301 Hamlet, 9, 43, 84,

100 nights of, 362

121, 225, 252, 301

166-170,

171,

208,

319-320, 324, 334, 337, 338, 341, 365, 382 Hyde, Susan, 29, 339

Hanel, Blanch, 170, 171-172, 198 Hangtown, 75, 76

Hanover, 305
Harper's (periodical),
382, 383
116, 126, 169,

Harvard College, 309 Harvard Theatre Collection,

xi,

378

Hawk, Harry,

179, 181, 186

Haworth, Joseph, 347, 386 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 125 Haymarket Theatre, 119, 120, Hemeya (The Apostate), 43
Hemphill, Mr.,
196, 379

121

lago (Othello), role of: Booth, Edwin, 59, 77, 92, 115, 209, 218, 286-287, 3<>4, 3* 2-3 2 3> 343344 Booth, Junius Brutus, 6, 10, 42 Irving,' Henry, 280, 283-284, 285287 Ibsen, Hendrik, 367 Illinois, 53 Illnesses, of Edwin Booth, 162, 206,
218,
249,

262, 298,

300,

322-

324, 327-328, 343-344, 348-349.

Henry

Vttl, 235

35^-3531 3<*8-37*

373-375

175, 177, 188, 191193, 200 Heron, Matilda, 87-88, 98 Hill, Robert W., 378 Hoffman, John T., 171 Holliday Street Theater, 40, 94 Holmes, Mrs. (mother of Mary

Herold, David,

Iron Chest, or
der,

The Mysterious MurThe, Edwin Booth in, 75,

87, 95, 102, 174, 185, 314 Junius Brutus Booth in, 6, 35-36, 60 Irving, Florence, 280, 383 Irving, Henrietta, 187 Irving, Henry, 92, 121, 235, 258, 262-

Ann), 122 Holmes, Mary Ann, see Booth, Mary Ann (Holmes) Honolulu, 70-71 Horatio (Hamlet), 95 Hotel Brunswick, 264 Hotel Vendome, 296, 297, 339 Hough, Garry, 84 Houghton, Lord, 269 House, Edward H., 276, 278, 284285, 380

263, 267, 269-289, 290, 292, 300,

312, 314-315* 3i8, 3*9* 330, 335. 348, 350, 379

engagement with Edwin Booth,

280-287, 2 89
Italy,

306

Jackass Gulch, 75 Jackson, Andrew, 20 Jaffier (Venice Preserved), 56 Janauschek, Madame, 2x7
Jarrett,

Howard,

Joe, 327

Henry,

82,

183

INDEX
Jefferson, Joseph, 33, 35-36, 81-83, 89, 92, 174, 179, j 97 , 227, 252, 257, 260, 266, 288, 336, 337-342,
361, 3<fc-3<$7, 375, 3& Jefferson, Mrs. Joseph, 82 Jefferson, Maggie, 288, 339 Jenner, Sir William, 275

395
Edwin,
112, 113, 237-238

Forrest,

K.mg Lear, 43, 321 Kings Bell, The (Stoddard), 134

Ladies'

Home Journal,

381

Lady of Lyons, The, 70

Fire-

Jenny Lind Theater, 48, 54, 55 Jerome, Fred (The American man), 66
Jersey City, 171, 187, 195-196

John Wilkes Booth (Wilson), Johnson, Andrew, 222-223

Johnson, Samuel, 290, 346 Joseph Jefferson (Wilson), 382 Judah, Mrs,, 72, 73, 255

Laertes (Hamlet), 43, 264 Lafarge House, 165, 206 Lakewood, 369 Langtry, Lillie, 273-274 Last Tragedian, The (Skinner), 377,
381

383

Judge
Julia
Juliet

Advocate General's
386

Office,

Ward Howe
Elliott), 385

Lear, see King Lear Lee, Robert K, 119, 173 Leipzig* 305 Lemaitre, Fr^ddric, 74 Leyden, Dr., 304 Life and Art of Eduom Booth
ter), 377

(Win-

(Richards and
Juliet), 82, 213,

(Romeo and
220-221

Julius Caesar, 19, 233-238, 241-242 Edwin Booth in, 43, 163, 164, 233,

Art of Richard Mansfield (Winter), 385 Life of Thomas Bailey Aldricb, The (Greenslet), 386 L*fe on the Stage (Morris), 385
Life and

355

Lincoln, Abraham, 118, 123, 157, 160, 163, 165-166, 207, 291, 376
assassination of, 173-201, 223, 363

Kalamazoo, 325-326
70-71 Kansas City Star, 340 Katharine, Queen (Henry VIII), 235 Katherme and Petruchio (Garrick),
68, 115, 263, 278

Kamehameha IV,

attempts to kidnap, 175, 178 funeral of, 186-187, 192 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 180, 181
Lincoln, Robert, 171, 196, 201, 214 Lind, Jenny, 22, 48, 210 Literary Friends and Acquaintance

Kean, Edmund,

8, 9-10, 22, 31, 3233, 46, 92, 102, 121, 160, 220,

(Howells), 381
Little

283, 319-320, 321, 323, 324, 363

Kearny, Mr. (school principal),

30, 42

29,

New

Church Around the Comer,

York, 375

Keats, John, 97-98 Keene, Laura, 68-70, 179, 181, 186, 23<$ 237

Little Nell, 233 Little Toddlekms, 87

Kellogg, Gertrude, 337

Liverjxx)!, 289, 300 Lockridge, Richard, 377 Logan, Eliza, 85

Kemble, Fanny, 22 Kemble, John Philip,

London,
o, 121,

320

6, 8, 10, 17, 119-122, 215, 234-235, 261, 263-289, 298, 300

Kemble

family, 7-8

Kimmel, Stanley, 377 Kong Lear, role of: Booth, Edwin, 77, 88,
277, 304-306 Booth, Junius Brutus,

Longfellow,
252-253, 2755, 10, 20,

Long Branch, 224, 256, 316 Henry Wadsworth, 277

Louisville, 22, 25, 38, 84, 347

Love Chase, The, 69

Lovett (horse thief), 84, 366 Ludlow, Fitzhugh, 126, 127, 143

36

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Ludlow, Noah,
60, 62, 63

Ludwig (German actor), 301, 303 Lamp, John (The Review), 60

Latz (gambler),
69, 186

Manfred (Byron), 224 Manhattan Opera House, 373 Mannering, Colonel (Guy Manner*g), 66

Lyceum

Theater, 234-235, 258, 269, 277, 280-285, 300, 312, 330 Lytton, Edward Bulwer, 77, 271
McAllister,

Man

Manning, Cardinal, 275 o* Airlie, The, 233

Mansfield, Richard, 312, 314, 348, 385 Mantell, Robert Bruce, 312

McAneny,

Ward, 313 Marguerite, 378

of: 43, 68, 115-116, 254
123, 157

Macbeth, role

Edwin Booth,

Marble Heart, The, 73-74 Marlborough, 239 Marlowe, Julia, 287, 365, 385 Maryland, 191-192
Marysville, 58, 63, 76 Matthews, Brander, 319-320 Maturin, Charles Robert, 86

John Wilkes Booth,

Macbeth, Lady, 115-116, 235

Mcdoskey,

J. J., 64, 69, 73-75,

386

MacCracken, Noble, 364 McCullough, John, 182, 254 Macduff (Macbeth), 43, 353 Mace, Harriet, see Booth, Harriet (Mace) McEntee, Jervis, 230, 244-245, 264265

Mayo, Frank, 337-338

Mazeppa, 84, 208 Melancholy Tale
of 'Me\ The (Sothern), 382 Melbourne, 70 Melnotte, Claude (The Lady of

Lyons), 70, 314, 377

Mackenzie, Dr. Mordell, 275, 276 Macklin, Charles, 320 MacmiUarfs Magazine, 286 Macready, William Charles, 31, 156,
273

McVicker, James,

245, 250, 254, 255,

Memoirs (Ellen Terry), 378, 379 Memoirs of Edwin Booth, 201, 214 Memphis, 84, 123, 329 Menken, Adah, 84, 208 Menken, Helen, 378 Merchant of Venice, The, 20, 32,
43, 68, 209, 278, 316, 355 Merrilies, Meg, 235

257, 288-289,

W-itf*

348
217,

McVicker, Mrs. James, 292-296 McVicker, Mary, 84, 213, 216,

Metamora,

112, 157

220-222, 224; see also, Booth,

Mary McVicker
McVIcker's Theater, 84, 213, 259 Mad Booths of Maryland, The (Kimmel), 377 Maddern, Minnie, 312
Madeira, Island of, Mad Folk of the Theatre (Skinner), 380 Magonigle, Mr. and Mrs. Harry, 108,
212, 242, 371, 373, 375

Metropolitan HoteX 182 Metropolitan Opera House, 337 *'a Theater, New York,

"

92, 109; see also sn

,

Winter

Metropolitan

Theater, San Fran77 Miller, Dr. Erasmus, 133, 136, 139,

Cisco, 68, 69, 72,

140, 145 Miller, Mrs. Erasmus, 139, 140 Miller, Wynn, 288-289, 292

Mahoney, Elk V., 386 Malone, John T., 326

Maguire,

Tom,

54, 55, 56,

64

Mississippi River, 60

Mammoth Cave, 254 Manchester, England, 121, 235, 314 Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., 256,
310-311

MitcheU, Jimmy, 22, 215 Mitchell family, 28-29 Mobile, 83, 253 Modjeska, Helena, 311, 327, 337, 347-

Mokelumne

River, 76

INDEX
Molony, Kitty,
377,
228,

380;
123

see

305, also

325-332,

Goodale,

Katherine

Montgomery,

397 New York Custom House, 125 New York Dramatic Mirror, 336, 341 New York Evening Post, 161 New York Herald, 139, 148, 205, 206,
vceum, 373

Montreal, 214 Moray, John, 229-230 Morris, Clara, 95, 185, 243, 385 Morris, Mowbray, 287 Morrison, Edward, 378

New New New New

York Press, 335 York Public Library, Manuscript

and

Theatre

Collec-

Mortimer, Sir Edward

Chest), role of:

(The Iron
102,

tions, 378

Edwin Booth,

75, 76, 95-96,

6, 36,

York Sun (newspaper), 257 York Sunday Times, 99, 101,

169

*74 185, 314 Junius Brutus Booth, Moulton, Ben, 75-76

42
xi,

Mount Auburn Cemetery,

146, 171, 227, 333, 335

New York Times, 245, 312, 355 New York Tribune, 91, 113, 114,
141,

160,

Mount Vernon

Hotel, 351

Much Ado

New York University, 316 New York World, 220, 222,

Newport,
Niagara
177, 310-317

205, 220, 243

about Nothing, 68 Mimsey's Magazine, 385

323, 355

Marietta, Joaquin, 58 Museum of the City of

New

York,

Falls, 108 Niblo's Garden, 94, 113, 116, 122, 157, 208, 225

Theatre Collection, 378

Nanjemoy

Stores, Maryland, 191

Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens), 339340 Nobles, Milton, 336 Norfolk, 13

Narcisse, 232

Narragansett Pier, 328, 340, 346, 361, 368 Nashville, 20, 254 Natchez, 19 National Hotel, 175, 223 National Theater, 44 Nevada City, 59, 62, 76 Neville, Maurice, 315 New Bedford, 332 New Hampshire, 176 New Orleans, 60, 62, 155, 216, 218, *39 330 New Way to Pay Old Debts, 31, 8586, 120

OTlaherty,
Stuart

William,

see

William

O'LaughHn, Michael,

175, 188

Old Capitol Prison, 188, 189 Olympic theater, 226 Omar Khayyam, 246 Oneida (yacht), 334
Opera House,

New York,

208

Ophelia (Hamlet), 213, 217 Orange, Prince of, 10 Osgood, Rev. Samuel, 107, 142, 231, 256
Othello, role of:

Booth, Edwin,
124, 163, 173-1741
in,

New York, 94,

200, 225

&7*

ix, xi, 137, 209, 274, 280, 283-286, 304, 306, 331, 343,

Edwin Booth

81,

89-93, 90-

379 Booth, Junius Brutus, 35, 42, 102,

283 Forrest,
Irving,
Salvini,

joo, 108-131, 133, 134, 136, 145-

147, 156, 157, 160-164, 251-252,

271,

312,

314,

322,

326, 337,

Edwin, 112, 113, 218 Henry, 277-287

347 355 373 Junius Brutus Booth

Kean, Edmund, 10
in, 3, 13, 44,

71

Tommaso,

243, 322

398

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Pittsburgh, 336 Playbills, 101-102
Players, The, 334, 336, 340-345, 349354-358, 3<fe~3<fc, 370, 374. 35

Othello, 42, 235, 316, 322 Other Day s (Winter), 385 Our American Cousin, 179 Overreach, Sir Giles (A New

Way

314 Junius Brutus Booth, 31-32, 35, 36, 85-86 Owens, John E., 235
Paine, Lewis, 175, 188, 200 Palace Hotel, 330

to Pay Old Debts): Edwin Booth, 85-86, 89, 95-96,

Polyeucte, 100 Port Royal, 192 Porte Saint Martin, Paris, 268 Potomac River, 191 Princess Theater, 263, 278, 279, 282, 284 Princeton University Library, 378

Palmer House, 327 Panama, Isthmus of, 48, 53-54,

60,

77

Panama City, 54 Panic of 1873, 243, 244 Pardon, 200

Paris, 122, 192, 268, 351

Providence, 19, 42, 355 Pry, Lucy, 130, 138 Putnam, George Palmer, 147

Queenstown, 268
Rachel, 22, 89, 100, 210, 320, 363 Rathbone, Major, 180-181

Park Theater, Boston, 296 Park Theater, New York, 13 Parsons, Thomas, 342 Pastor,* Tony, 208 Payne, John Howard, 43-44, 210
Peale

Reade, Charles, 276, 278-279, 380 Reardon, Mary, 378 Recordings, made by Edwin Booth,
xt-xii,

Museum, 386

352

Pemberton House, 38
Perry, Agnes, 256, 311 Pescara (The Apostate):

Rehan, Ada, 312, 371 Reminiscences (Howe), 383 Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic
Residenz Theater, 300-302, 304 Review, or The Way of Windsor, The, 60 Richard H, 252, 259-260 Richard in, role of:

Edwin Booth,

92,

314
123, 135

John Wilkes Booth,

(Ckpp), 383

Junius Brutus Booth, 6 Petersburg, 11-12, 162, 172

Petruchio

(The

Tammg

of

the

Shrew),

PfafPs beer cellar, New York, 126 Ph&dre, Bernhardt as, 252
Philadelphia, 100, 137, 141, 155, 170,
183,

68, 115, 263

Edwin Booth,
.

44-45, 66, 70^72, 81, 88-90, 94, 113-115, 120-121, 137,

189,

195,

196,

239,

252,

293

Edwin Booth
3*8, 351

in, 81, 108, 162, 293, in, 3,

124, 164 Junius Brutus Booth, 6, 9-13, 242 w . , 5, 34-3<5, 38, 40, 44-45, 7i HZ Richard 111 (Gibber version), o, 40,
72, 89, 169, 242, 323, 329, 348 Richards, Laura E., 385 Richelieu (Bulwer Lytton), 273 Curse of Rome speech, 228-229, 380 Edwin Booth as Cardinal in, 77, 81,
86, 92, 98, 100, 113, 121, 171, 206,

John Wilkes Booth,

Junius Brutus Booth

20-21

Philadelphia Press, 245 Philharmonic Society, N.Y., 224 Piamonti, Signora, 243 Picioli, Signer, 29 Piercy, Samuel, 330 Pierre (Venice Preserved), 19, 56 Pipesville, 65-66, 273 Pitou, Augustus, 226

207, 22^-229, 260, 267, 271, 298, 332, 355, 35<5

INDEX
Richmond (Richard ///),
Richmond, Va.,
184, 378
56, 80,

399

94
177,

100,

173,

175,

School for Scandal, The, 68 Scott, Clement, 270, 279

Scott,

John

R., 44-45

Edwin Booth

in, 81, 95,

253

Junius Brutus Booth

18, 43. 253

in, 3,

n,

12,

Rime of

Rigoletto, 158 the Ancient Mariner, The, Coleridge, 22

Sedley, Henry, 72, 73, 81 "Seeing the elephant," 57-58 Seward, William Henry, 157 Seymour, James, 93

Seymour, May Davenport, 378 Seymour, William, 378

Shakespeare, William, 9, 169, 209, 220, 2581 3>, 322 statue of, in Central Park, 163 Shakespeare on the Stage (Winter),

Rip Van Winkle,

Rivals, The, 68

227, 252
2I<5

Robertson, Richard A., 212-213,

219, 227, 233-234, 244, 250

Robson, May, 337

Rochester, 343-344

Rock,

Ida, 325, 329, 331

Romance of Mary Devlin Booth, The

Romeo,
(Fauntleroy), 381 82-83, 95, 213, 220-222
Juliet, 68, 82-83, 95. 2I 8>

Romeo and

220, 311-312

384-385 Shakespeare on the Stage, Second Series (Winter), 385 Shaw, George Bernard, 367 She Stoops to Conquer, 64 Sheffield, 300 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 98 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 299

Rough and Ready, 59 Royle, Edwin Milton, 326, 332, 336,

382

Sherman, William Tecumseh,

336

123, 168,

Sherwood, Mrs. John, 118-119,

210
ShirttailJSend, 75
IL, 257

Royle, Selena, 326

Russell,

James

Russell, Lillian, 312

Shylock (The Merchant of Venice),

role of:

Russia, 306

Ryder, John, 272-273

Sacramento, 56, 58, 72-73, 76-77, 81 Sacramento Theater, 73 St. Charles Theater, 60
St.

Booth, Edwin, 68, 120, 157, 209-210,

Booth, Junius Brutus,
19,

34

Kean, Edmund, 169

Siddons, Sarah, 320 Simpson, Mr., 60-61, 63 Sims, Drn 133 Sinclair, Mrs. Catherine, 68-69, 72, 73, 112 Sketches of Tudor Hall and the

269, 278 St. Louis, 124, 155, 184, 260, 327, 329
St.

James Hotel,
Paul, 340

Salvini, Alessandro, 322, 373

Salvini,

Tommaso,

243, 257, 321-322,

58, 63-69, 71,

3*3> 345. 373

Booth Family (Mahoney), 386

Skinner, Cornelia Otis, Skinner, Otis, 169, 210, 348-349, 352-353.
383
Skull used in Hamlet, 84, 366

San Francisco, 48, 54-55,

345

382-383
241, 264, 265,
3 64. 377.

77, 109, 200, 254-256, 330-33i>

379-

San Francisco Hall, 64-68

Saratoga, 262, 265 Sargent, John Singer, 350, 363 "Sargent's Portrait of Edwin Booth " at The Players' (Aldrich),

350 Savannah, 13

Smith, Mark, 218 Smith, St. dair, 374, 375 Sothern, Edward H., 257, 375, 382 Sources, notes on, Southey, Robert, 21

400

PRINCE OF PLAYERS
Tompkins, Orlando,
94, 174, 185

Spain, 306 Spartacus, Forrest role, 112, 157 Spear, George, 49, 53, 55, 56, 58, 60, **> *7* 73 75* ^79

Spectre Bridegroom, The, 41, 46 Spiritualism, 147-148 Squaw Man, The (Royle), 326 Stanton, Edwin M., 214 Starr, Elk, 176, 177, 187
Starr, Nellis, 176 Stedman, E. C., 263, 271, 278

Toodles, 80 Topeka, 336 Townsend, Margaret, 251 Traubel, Horace, 384 Tremont Theater, 19 Tressel (Richard 111), 40-42, 72, 89,
oo, 242, 363

Trinity Church, 174

Troy, 82

Tudor

Hall, 80, 386

Stoddard, Elizabeth, 125-127, 131-149, 198, 298, 305, 384 Stoddard, Richard Henry, 125-127,
132-143, 147-149* 198-109, 298, 305

Twain, Mark, 336 Two Great Othellos (Morris), 385 Two Loves and a Life (Reade), 276

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 133

Strollers, troupes of, 7 Stuart, William, 113, 160-161, 164, 1 66, 210, 211, 229

Unlocked Book, The, A Memoir of John WUkes Booth by his sister Asia Booth Clarke, 378379

163-

Sulphur Springs, 340

Stunner, Charles, 131 Surratt, John, 175, 188
Surratt,

Vaders,

Emma,

325, 329, 331

Vagrant Memories (Winter), 381

200
Valentine, Edward, 366-367 Valentine Museum, 378 Valet de Sham, The, 46 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 313 Van Lennep, Dr. William, 378 Vassar College, 364 Vaux, Calvert, 297

Mary,

175, 177, 188,

Sydney, 70
Syracuse, 328

Talma, Franjois Joseph, 220, 304 Taming of the Shrew, The, 68, 115,
263

Taylor

(actor), 254 Taylor, Bayard, 126

Taylor, John, 69 Taylor, Tom, 179

Vaux, Downing, 297, 300, Vaux, Julia, 298, 304 Venice Preserved, 19, 56 Victoria, Queen, 272
Victoria Theater, 300-301 Vienna, 305-306
Virginia, 119, 192

304, 310

Tennyson, Alfred,

159, 277, 378

Terry, Ellen, 258, 275, 280-282, 285, 286, 312, 314, 348, 350, 378, 379 Texas, 330 Theatre Magazine, 384
Theatrical
2 5*

Virginia City, 254

Wales, Prince and Princess

273

of, 272, 31, 228,

Sketches

(Townsend),

Wallack, James William, 20,

126, 127, 137, 196,

Thompson, Launt,
200, 361

Wallack, Lester, 337, 340

229

Thumb, Tom,

Wallaces Theater, 69
Waller, Willmarth, 58-60, 62, 64, 65, 218
Street Theater, 196 190, 223 Wardrobes, see Costumes

Tlcknor and Fields (publishers), 132 Tiffany, jeweler, 171, 262 Thus (Brutus), 43-44
Toledo, 216 Tolstoy, Leo, 192

Walnut

War Department,

INDEX
Warren, William,
340, 342, 361
89, 141, 174, 184,

401
217, 220-222, 237, 243-244, 253, 266-267, 271, 280, 293, 298, 303, 3^5, 3" 339* 354 3*2, 3^7, 373

Winter, William, 91-92, 170, 201, 212,

Warwick,
379

Charles, 177, 178, 181, 182,

,

Washington, D.C,
328-329

123, 157, 164, 175, 177, 187, 188, 195, 198, 200, 214,

Winter Garden,

377, 38i, 384-385

109, in, 118, 122, 131, 134, 139, 149, 160, 162, 163165, 166, 205, 207, 208, 210, 211, 215, 217, 245; see also Metro-

Washington, George, 7 Webster, Daniel, 22

Wellington, Duke of, 32 Welten, Oscar, 303 Westminster Abbey, 298-299

politan Theater, New Winter's Tale, The, 232, 233

York

With Walt Whitman

<Traubel),384

Camden

White, Stanford, 341 Whitman, Walt, 24, 113, Wilde, Oscar, 283

126, 257,

384

Women, Edwin Booth and, 93-95, 98,

114-115, 210, 254, 30^-35 35*352, 3<*4 38o Woodman, Lilian, iio-xxx, 120, 122,
124, 127, 129-131, 136, 137, 143, 149, 183, 200, 319; see also Aid-

Wilderness, battle of the, 161 Wilford (The Iron Chest), 42 Wilhelm, Emperor, 304 Wilkes, John, 7 William Seymour Theatre Collection, 378

rich,

Woodman,

Wilson, Francis, 353-354*

3 6*

3&h

Thomas Bailey Mattie, iio-iii, 124, 129, 143, 198

Mrs.

365, 3^7-3 68 382, 383 Windsor Hotel, 290, 291, 355-35$

Yellow Dwarf, The, 66

Books
book

that live
imprint on a

The Norton
means

that in the it estimation publisher's is a book not for a single season but for the years.

W.W.NORTON & CO-ING-